Decoding Social Media is a pioneering course that partners students from the UBC Sauder School of Business and the Graduate School of Journalism to research and develop strategic social media plans for media outlets like the Vancouver Sun, The Walrus and CBC On the Coast.

One of the groups from 2013’s course received an Excellence in New Communication Award from the Society for New Communication Research, a global non-profit research and education foundation and think tank. The awards honour excellence in new communications, digital, mobile, social media and information and communications technology developments.

The students took the Social Media Marketing award in the academic category for a campaign created for Vancouver Magazine as part of the course. The social media project was also a finalist in the 2013 Canadian Online Publishing Award (COPA) for Best Use of Social Media.

We’ll be using the blog to post readings, course announcements and details of assignments, as well as posting slides from in-class presentations.

Class schedule at a glance:

Week 1 – Jan 5: Understanding social media / Social media disruption in journalism and business

Week 2 – Jan 12: Designing a social media strategy / Team dynamics workshop

Week 3 – Jan 19: Why we share, what we share, how we share, when we share

Week 4 – Jan 26: Monitoring, conversing, engaging and analyzing social media trends and impact

Week 5 – Feb 2: Tell stories together: Content creation/curation/aggregation/crowdsourcing

Week 6 – Feb 9: Handling a social media crisis / Developing a professional social media profile

Week 7 – Feb 17: Reading Week break – no class

Week 8 – Feb 23: Client project workshop

Week 9 – Mar 2: Psychological triggers and user experience

Week 10 – Mar 8: Ethical issues of social media

Week 11 – Mar 15: Social media as disruptor

Week 12 – Mar 22: The business of social media / The social media editor

Week 13 – March 29: Presentation of final projects

Week 14 – April 5: No class: Time allocated for project meeting with clients.