Course Schedule: Tuesday 9.30 p.m. – 12.30 p.m.

Location: Room 104, School of Journalism

Instructors

Prof Alfred Hermida
Graduate School of Journalism, Room 211
Contact: alfred.hermida AT ubc.ca
@hermida

Prof Meena Sandhu
Sauder School of Business
Contact: meenasandhu AT gmail.com
@meenasandhu

Course description

We are sharing more media from more sources with more people, more often and more quickly than ever before. Social media extends and enhances our ability to engage in dynamic, ongoing conversations and actively produce, as well as consume, content in every imaginable form. Social media is the new operating system for information. Information wants to be social. It wants to be shared, discussed, contested and corrected. The rise of social media has expanded our ability to influence what is published, changed the way we organise, challenged institutional control of information and transformed how companies reach customers. Citizens are no longer simply consumers of commercial messaging and formal news, but are creators, shapers, participants and sometimes consumers. This change has profound organizations for all institutions interested in communicating and influencing the public and who have been rapidly challenged to give up message control.

This course combines immersion in social media tools with a theoretical foundation to equip students with the knowledge and practical skills they need to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the evolving digital media ecosystem. The course simulates an interdisciplinary think tank environment. Students will identify research questions, develop applied projects and examine the impact of social media and social networking technologies on various aspects of society, business, culture, communication, web experience, and interface design. There will be significant teamwork where students collaborate on an applied social media project. There will be opportunity to learn from each other, and for students to pursue more advanced learning in specific areas of interest, such as sourcing and crafting content using social media tools like Hootsuite Pro.

Download the syllabus as a Word doc. 

Course Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, students will be expected to have:

  • Acquired an understanding of how digital technologies and media are reshaping political, business, social and cultural norms and practices
  • Be familiar with major concepts and theory about networked digital media
  • Be proficient with the best application of social media tools and practices in stakeholder communication, be it in marketing, business, NGO or journalism
  • Obtained experience in, and gained an understanding of, how to conduct a social media project from inception to completion
  • Be competent in the use of tools to assess and evaluate the performance of a social media initiative
  • Recognized the changes effected by social media in major aspects of Canada’s society, economy and culture, along with future implications and possibilities

Course materials

We will be using UBC Blogs to host the course website. Details of the course, assignments, readings and additional material will be posted there. https://blogs.ubc.ca/decodingsocialmedia2016/

Readings:

Required textbook:
Hermida, Alfred (2014) Tell Everyone: Why We Share and Why It Matters, (Doubleday Canada). Available in hardcover at the UBC Bookstore, Chapters, Amazon.ca and other booksellers, and as an ebook in the Kindle and iBookstore.

Weekly readings are posted on the UBC Blogs Decoding Social Media website

Assignments:
Assignments are to be submitted as Word attachments via e-mail to dsm.course@ubc.ca

  • HootSuite certification – 5%
  • Social media professional portfolio – 25%
  • Social media in-class presentations – 15%
  • Vancouver Social Instagram assignment: 15%
  • Applied client project: 40%

Course policies

The due dates of all assignments are stated clearly – failure to submit an assignment by the due date, without a valid written reason beforehand, will result in the loss of 5% of the assignment’s value for each day beyond the due date and your paper will be returned to you much later than other papers. Reasonable requests for extensions may be granted, but requests must be made at least 24 hours before the assignment is due. For obvious reasons extensions cannot be granted for the presentations.

Please see the following websites on Academic Integrity and the writing of papers from the Faculty of Arts.

You are expected to attend every class. You should be professional in your approach which involves being punctual and coming prepared for discussion on the topics under discussion.

Should you have a religious observance that will prevent you from attending class, from completing an assignment on time, please be sure to let us know at least two weeks in advance so that alternate arrangements can be made.

Course Schedule

Week 1 – Jan 5
Course introduction: 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 1
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.