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When the public outcry concerning the 'Facebook experiment' began, many commentators drew parallels to controversial social science experiments from a prior era. The infamous Milgram (1963) and Zimbardo (1973) experiments concerning the social psychology of obedience and aggression seemed in some ways obvious analogs to the Facebook experiment, at least inasmuch as all three violated norms about the treatment of human subjects in research. But besides that, what do they really have in common? In fact, a close reading of Milgram, Zimbardo, and the Facebook experiment reveals something about the way power--both as a subject of scholarly inquiry and as an element wielded by researchers--is conceptualized today. Although all three experiments were, in essence, measuring the researchers' ability to induce an emotional or behavioral change in subjects, the Facebook experiment did much more than the others to hide such considerations and naturalize the exercise of power at work in that study. This paper thus argues that the invisibility of power in the discourse of the Facebook experiment demonstrates, in miniature, the more insidious elements of big data as a whole.

An essay's motive or research problem consists of the rhetorical moves illuminating why that essay matters--what puzzling elements of a primary source it resolves, which contradictions in the data it explains, or what gaps in the literature it fills. This article invites college instructors to dedicate some of their classroom time to teaching students how to construct original, motive-driven arguments. More specifically, the article describes the conceptual triangle technique that uses a simple three-point concept map as the first step in active argument building. This technique is simple and flexible enough to be adapted across subject areas, data, and disciplines. The focus on scholarly motive in general and the use of the conceptual triangle in particular can be effective ways to help academic writers at all levels to develop original arguments that matter.

The Occupy movement has drawn attention to the political potential of online communities, and raised questions about the forms of emotional commitment that such communities engender. It has also generated a backlash, as supporters of the political-economic status quo have gone online to question or condemn the movement. This paper performs a discourse analysis of the messages left at one anti-Occupy site called We Are The 53%, in order to see whether such messages engaged with the idea that the current economic system creates unfair hardship and suffering. Surprisingly, the majority of the messages at We Are The 53% did not deny the existence of such hardship, but instead evinced a kind of superficial empathy with the suffering of others that viewed others’ misfortune as ultimately manageable. The paper thus questions the progressive political value of empathy in online spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]