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CS-234
Week 2: Usenet, Internet, Democracy
Secondary reading: "Information gerrymandering and undemocratic decisions"
Secondary reading: "Information gerrymandering and undemocratic decisions"
Completion requirements
Click
stewart19information.pdf
link to view the file.
◄ Assigned reading: "Piketty’s Inequality Story in Six Charts"
Jump to activity
Jump to activity
Ed Discussion
Instructor's notes
Primary reading: "The Computer as a Communication Device"
Primary reading: "A Theory of the Democratic Process"
Primary reading: handout "UseNet and Democratization"
Secondary reading: "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet" (excerpts)
Secondary reading: "The Virtual Community" (excerpts)
Secondary reading: "Remembering Netizens"
Secondary reading: "Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities"
Secondary reading: "You Are Who You Talk To: Detecting Roles in Usenet Newsgroups"
Secondary reading: "Picturing Usenet: Mapping Computer-Mediated Collective Action"
Optional reading: "Democracy - Council of Europe"
Optional reading: "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"
Lecture recording
Assigned reading: "The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web"
Assigned reading: "Piketty’s Inequality Story in Six Charts"
Secondary reading: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens"
Secondary reading: "Measurement and Analysis of Online Social Networks"
Secondary reading: "Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy"
Secondary reading: "PageRank Beyond the Web"
Secondary reading: World Inequality Report 2026 - Executive Summary
Post-lecture discussion form (Week 2)
Scribe notes (Week 2)
Primary reading: "Worst Practices in Search Engine Optimization"
Primary reading: "The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections"
Secondary reading: "Authorship and citation manipulation in academic research"
Secondary reading: "Google Bombing from a Time Perspective"
Secondary reading: "Promotional Reviews: An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation"
Secondary reading: "The manager's dilemma: a conceptualization of online review manipulation strategies"
Post-lecture discussion form (Week 4)
Scribe notes (Week 4)
Primary reading: "An Introduction to Vote-Counting Schemes"
Primary reading: "Secret ballot – European code of conduct on secret balloting"
Secondary reading: "The Single Transferable Vote"
Secondary reading: "Approval Voting"
Secondary reading: "The Swiss Postal Voting Process and its System and Security Analysis"
Secondary reading: "When Are Elections with Few Candidates Hard to Manipulate?"
Secondary reading: "Voting Procedures"
Post-lecture discussion form (Week 5)
Scribe notes (Week 5)
Anonymous course feedback
Primary reading: "Experiments in Algorithmic Governance: A history and ethnography of “The DAO,” a failed Decentralized Autonomous Organization"
Secondary reading: "Contracting in the smart era: the implications of blockchain and decentralized autonomous organizations for contracting and corporate governance"
Secondary reading: "Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations"
Secondary reading: "Now the Code Runs Itself: On-Chain and Off-Chain Governance of Blockchain Technologies"
Secondary reading: "The Seconomics (Security-Economics) Vulnerabilities of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations"
Secondary reading: "The Ring of Gyges: Using Smart Contracts for CrimeS
Post-lecture discussion form (Week 6)
Scribe notes (Week 6)
Primary reading: "Google Votes: A Liquid Democracy Experiment on a Corporate Social Network"
Primary reading: "Voting Behaviour and Power in Online Democracy: A Study of LiquidFeedback in Germany’s Pirate Party"
Secondary reading: "Viscous Democracy for Social Networks"
Secondary reading: "Direct voting and proxy voting"
Secondary reading: "Statement Voting"
Secondary reading: "The Principles of LiquidFeedback"
Secondary reading: "Liquid Democracy: An Algorithmic Perspective"
Post-lecture discussion form (Week 8)
Scribe notes (Week 8)
Primary reading: "The Promise of Prediction Markets"
Primary reading: "Quadratic Voting: How Mechanism Design Can Radicalize Democracy"
Secondary reading: "Automated Market Makers"
Secondary reading: "Three provocations for civic crowdfunding"
Secondary reading: "Prediction Markets"
Secondary reading: "Voting Squared: Quadratic Voting in Democratic Politics"
Secondary reading: "Uniswap and the rise of the decentralized exchange
Secondary reading: "Why do businesses go crypto? An empirical analysis of initial coin offerings"
Secondary reading: "Blockchain and the Economics of Crypto-tokens and Initial Coin Offerings"
Post-lecture discussion form (Week 9)
Scribe notes (Week 9)
Primary reading: "Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal: Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion"
Primary reading: "Crowdsourced Deliberation: The Case of the Law on Off-Road Traffic in Finland"
Secondary reading: "Referendums Are Never Merely Referendums: On the Need to Make Popular Vote Processes More Deliberative"
Secondary reading: "How the Republic of Venice chose its Doge: lot‐based elections and supermajority rule"
Secondary reading: "Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling in Britain"
Secondary reading: "Deliberation, cognitive diversity, and democratic inclusiveness: an epistemic argument for the random selection of representatives"
Post-lecture discussion form (Week 10)
Scribe notes (Week 10)
HW #1: "A leap into the past: Using Usenet"
HW #2 - Part 1: Write-up
HW #2 - Part 2: Peer Review
HW #2 - Part 3: Rebuttal
HW #3: DAO and Quadratic voting
HW #4: Collective Problem Solving
Homework 4 Group Signup
HW #4: Problem Proposal Commenting on Loomio
HW #4: Voting
HW #4: Choose Your Topic and Date for Presentation
Secondary reading: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" ►
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