TEACHING
Select Courses of My Design
NEW MEDIA AND THE AUDIENCE:
SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ENGAGEMENT
Fall 2017, Winter 2018, & Summer 2015
In the new media environment, audiences can choose from a myriad of media sources and platform options. With increased autonomy and interactivity, audiences demonstrate new forms of engagement, for example, through community discussion and participation, and content generation on social media. While audience fragmentation has made it more challenging to measure audience in a traditional way in terms of ratings and exposure, alternative dimensions of audience engagement are more observable and measurable on new media. This course focuses on conceptualizing and measuring various dimensions of audience engagement in social, political and economic contexts, using cutting-edge methods such as analyses of weblog and social media data in connection with traditional methods including surveys, experiments and focus groups. This class will enhance students’ research skills and theoretical and methodological understanding of audience engagement in the new media environment.
SOCIAL MEDIA PRACTICES:
NEW VS. ENDURING PRINCIPLES
Fall 2017 & Winter 2018
Drawing from research in communication studies, journalism, and marketing, this course investigates the ways in which people use social media, and what social, political and economic implications their use of social media holds. Particular attention will be paid to distinguishing what is new or enduring about social media practices. How are today’s power social media users similar to or different from opinion leaders from the 1950s? What are the similarities and the differences between social media buzz and good old water cooler conversations (c.f. eWoM (electronic word of mouth) and WOM)? Have social media fundamentally changed the ways in which news is created, distributed and consumed? Is “Slactivism” a new phenomenon or we had similar concerns for disengagement in politics caused by mass media (i.e., narcotizing dysfunction)? This class will enhance students’ theoretical and practical understanding of social media practices as well as social media-related research skills.