Last Wednes­day marked the end of the Fall semes­ter for my course at the Uni­ver­sity of Miami. Together with 19 stu­dents and invited lec­tur­ers, we explored the work­ings of social media from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, includ­ing iden­tity, com­mu­nity, brand­ing, PR, and jour­nal­ism. The class devel­oped on three lev­els, cov­er­ing the prac­tice of pub­lish­ing and shar­ing; online cul­ture, behav­ior, and soci­ol­ogy; and, rel­e­vant case stud­ies about PR and jour­nal­ism online.

As with pre­vi­ous classes, I am grate­ful to my class for putting up with some of the short­com­ings of the course. The course gets bet­ter with each new iter­a­tion, thanks mostly to feed­back from the stu­dents and their performance.

Posted below is the orig­i­nal syl­labus for Fall semes­ter 2010, which we mostly fol­lowed and with the one big excep­tion of not cov­er­ing vir­tual worlds. Sec­ond Life did take a big hit this year with the depar­ture of its Founder, but other worlds are doing exceed­ingly well, includ­ing Blue Mars and World of War­craft, of course.

Based on learn­ings from this semes­ter, I’ll be mod­i­fy­ing some things for the Spring 2011 Semes­ter, as follows:

* Cover the soci­ol­ogy later in the course
* Quickly ramp up indi­vid­ual pub­lish­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tive tools
* Spend more time ini­tially on the mechan­ics of some plat­forms, includ­ing Word­Press, LinkedIn, Face­book, and third-party apps for Twit­ter
* Invite guest lec­tur­ers later in the semes­ter, rather than right away
* Pro­vide more direc­tion and struc­ture regard­ing class projects
* Space the stu­dent pre­sen­ta­tions out through­out the semes­ter, rather than grouped at the end
* Empha­size learn­ing the vocab­u­lary from the begin­ning, since vocab­u­lary helps to struc­ture the learn­ing and to solid­ify key concepts

With­out a doubt, I learned a whole lot more about teach­ing and about myself while teach­ing this semes­ter. The more I teach, the more I am hum­bled by the pro­fes­sion and by my col­leagues who are full or tenured professors.

The orig­i­nal course syl­labus for the Fall semes­ter fol­lows below. If you read through it, please let me know your thoughts.

 

CNJ595: Social Media for Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Uni­ver­sity of Miami School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Fall Semes­ter 2010

Instruc­tor: Alex de Car­valho
Meet­ing place and time: WCB 2046, Wednes­day, 6:25pm – 9:05pm
Office hours: Please schedule

SYLLABUS

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND PURPOSE:

In a few short years, social media has pro­foundly changed online com­mu­ni­ca­tions. With the advent of new tools and plat­forms, more and more peo­ple are pub­lish­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in con­ver­sa­tions online. Mass adop­tion of social com­put­ing tech­nolo­gies has led to new types of medi­ated inter­ac­tion as peo­ple main­tain more rela­tion­ships than any time prior.

As for­mer mem­bers of the audi­ence become the cre­ators of con­tent, cor­po­ra­tions and media orga­ni­za­tions lose con­trol of their mar­ket­ing mes­sage and indi­vid­u­als face new chal­lenges in terms of pri­vacy, iden­tity, and the main­te­nance of vir­tual rela­tion­ships. This course explores impli­ca­tions, oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges for the com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion, includ­ing jour­nal­ism, pub­lic rela­tions, adver­tis­ing, and marketing.

The course is grounded in prac­tice, and you will be required to par­tic­i­pate in social net­works, forums, blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, and more. Class dis­cus­sions, pre­sen­ta­tions by stu­dents, read­ings, case stud­ies, and invited speak­ers, will high­light new effec­tive strate­gies and appli­ca­tions of these platforms.

The class is highly par­tic­i­pa­tory both offline and online. Between the weekly sched­uled class meet­ings, this course’s dis­cus­sion con­tin­ues in a vari­ety of online and vir­tual envi­ron­ments. Those who com­plete this course will know how to use social media pro­duc­tively, and have a frame­work for under­stand­ing and eval­u­at­ing new tools and platforms.

COURSE PREREQUISITES:

The class is open to all; there are no pre­req­ui­sites for this class.

MATERIALS FEES:

Stu­dents will not be required to pur­chase any mate­ri­als or books and all Read­ings will either be handed out or avail­able online for free. We will read research papers, stud­ies, and press arti­cles. These read­ings are orga­nized by week and are avail­able online via the course wiki.

FORMAT:

This course com­bines lec­tures and stu­dent pre­sen­ta­tions. Classes are gen­er­ally a semi-structured top­i­cal dis­cus­sion based on read­ings and ques­tions. Guest lec­tur­ers will be invited to lead class dis­cus­sions on cer­tain top­ics. Active par­tic­i­pa­tion is expected.

ASSIGNMENTS/COURSEWORK:

We will be using a shared wiki, indi­vid­ual blogs, a book­mark­ing ser­vice, and indi­vid­ual twit­ter accounts as the web plat­forms for this course.

The wiki func­tions as the cen­tral space for col­lab­o­ra­tion, where assign­ments and read­ings will be posted and dis­cus­sions will be held. The wiki will also have the Read­ings list, which may change dur­ing the course accord­ing to our progress.

The online require­ments serve both to famil­iar­ize you with new web com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies and to con­tinue the dis­cus­sion beyond the con­fines of the campus.

• Online par­tic­i­pa­tion through social media util­i­ties and plat­forms– 30% of final grade. Cre­ate a blog and a Twit­ter account and pub­lish sev­eral times a week on top­ics rel­e­vant to the class dis­cus­sion, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. Stu­dents may also blog about a topic of their own inter­est. Each blog post should link to rel­e­vant resources on the web. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class (or on spe­cial­ized top­ics accord­ing to a student’s inter­ests), the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Each blog post must include the tag “umsocmed”. Par­tic­i­pa­tion through other social media plat­forms includ­ing video and pho­to­shar­ing web­sites will count as well.

• Top­i­cal Pre­sen­ta­tion and Dis­cus­sion – 30% of final grade. You will be required to deliver a pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing the course. You may choose to research and present an exist­ing rela­tional tech­nol­ogy (a cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism web­site, a social net­work, or a social media util­ity), cov­er­ing the fol­low­ing aspects: what is the his­tory of the tech­nol­ogy or plat­form? How is iden­tity devel­oped? What types of activ­i­ties cre­ate dig­i­tal traces? What are the rela­tional aspects and func­tion­al­i­ties? How are rela­tion­ships cre­ated and dis­played? How are com­mu­ni­ties formed and man­aged? How does the social dis­cov­ery of infor­ma­tion, news, and events occur? How does the plat­form or tech­nol­ogy inte­grate with exter­nal web services?

  Alter­na­tively, you may choose to inter­view a rec­og­nized thought-leader or entre­pre­neur in social media, includ­ing: how did they get started with social media? What is their field of exper­tise or strength in social media? What were the mile­stones in their own online devel­op­ment? What do they con­sider to be his­tor­i­cal mile­stones in social media (case stud­ies, new tech­nolo­gies, etc.)? What chal­lenges have they faced and what bat­tles have they fought along the way (anec­dotes are impor­tant)? What is the future of social media?

  Pre­sen­ta­tions should be 20 min­utes in length with accom­pa­ny­ing visuals.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion — 30% of final grade. Class par­tic­i­pa­tion is required. Stu­dents are expected to do all the Read­ings for the course, to attend classes reg­u­larly, to have com­pleted the read­ing in advance of classes, and to par­tic­i­pate actively in class discussion.

Final Exam — 10% of final grade. The final exam will eval­u­ate your famil­iar­ity with social media con­cepts, case stud­ies, and vocabulary.

Recog­ni­tion will be given to those who demon­strate con­sis­tent improve­ment over the course of the term.

TEXTS:

Read­ings will be as cur­rent as pos­si­ble and the instruc­tor will reg­u­larly assign mate­ri­als. In addi­tion, stu­dents will be respon­si­ble for keep­ing up to date with the course’s blogroll which will be pre­sented in the begin­ning of the semes­ter. Hand­outs may be pro­vided in addi­tion, in the class and stu­dents are respon­si­ble for read­ing assigned mate­ri­als and the blogroll prior to each class.

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT:

Use of copy­righted mate­ri­als is strictly pro­hib­ited for any assign­ment or class pre­sen­ta­tion unless per­mis­sion is granted by the author. You may use Cre­ative Com­mons (http://www.creativecommons.org) mate­ri­als as long as you com­ply with the licens­ing require­ments. Licens­ing infor­ma­tion for mate­ri­als used are to be sub­mit­ted together with your assign­ments.

COURSE TOPICS OUTLINE

The order of course top­ics may vary from the syl­labus based on the avail­abil­ity of guest lec­tur­ers, as well as on stu­dents’ progress in assim­i­lat­ing course mate­ri­als and learn­ings from class.

Ses­sion 1 August 25, 2010
Course intro­duc­tion: who are we and what are our inter­ests; what do we expect and want out of this class?

Instruc­tor and stu­dents intro­duce them­selves, instruc­tor explains objec­tives, assign­ments and expectations.

Dis­cus­sion top­ics:
*  Brief overview of social media
*  Dif­fer­ences between tra­di­tional media and social media
*  Sug­gested books for ref­er­ence and to acquire greater pro­fi­ciency
*  Prod­uct vs. process jour­nal­ism
*  Rapid cog­ni­tion online
*  Dis­cus­sion about social media lit­er­acy
*  Intro­duc­tion to object-centered social­ity
*  Our class tag / hash­tag: umsocmed  / (#umsocmed on Twit­ter)
*  Blog­ging cul­ture: pres­ence, cred­i­bil­ity, iden­tity, rep­u­ta­tion, author­ity, and influ­ence
*  Intro­duc­tion to Word­Press, includ­ing hosted and self-hosted blogs
*  Intro­duc­tion to Twit­ter
*  Some notable Twit­ter accounts to fol­low
*  Overview of location-based ser­vices, par­tic­u­larly foursquare
*  Aggre­ga­tion with friend­feed and dis­tri­b­u­tion with Ping.fm
*  Twit­ter desk­top and mobile apps, includ­ing Tweet­deck and Seesmic

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Set up a Twit­ter account and post an update with the hash­tag #umsocmed. If your Twit­ter account is pri­vate, please advise the instruc­tor.
*  Set up a Word­Press blog, whether hosted on WordPress.com or self-hosted
* Pub­lish a blog post, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
*  Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Wathen, C.N., Burkell, J., (2002). Believe It or Not: Fac­tors Influ­enc­ing Cred­i­bil­ity on the Web. Jour­nal Of The Amer­i­can Soci­ety For Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence And Tech­nol­ogy, 53(2):134–144, 2002
* Har­git­tai, E., Fuller­ton, L., Menchen-Trevino, E., & Thomas, K.Y. r — (2010). Trust Online: Young Adults’ Eval­u­a­tion of Web Con­tent. Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion 4 (2010), 468–494

Ses­sion 2 Sep­tem­ber 1, 2010
Theme: Word­Press, SEO, jour­nal­ism tools

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how the class will be graded
Social media glos­sary
Review of Word­Press setup, hash­tags, com­ment­ing. Wid­gets
Dis­qus com­ment­ing sys­tem
Review of Twit­ter accounts
Intro­duc­tion to the class wiki
RSS, fee­dread­ers, Google Reader, OPML, and Feed­Burner
Intro­duc­ing social book­mark­ing and Deli­cious
Intro­duc­ing the course blogroll

Guest lec­tur­ers:
* John Car­cutt, Pres­i­dent, Applied SEO, Inc.
*  Greg Linch, News Inno­va­tion Man­ager, Publish2

Dis­cus­sion top­ics:
*  Search Engine Opti­miza­tion: def­i­n­i­tion, impor­tance, tech­niques, tools, blog search engines
*  Social Media Opti­miza­tion
*  News inno­va­tion: how is tra­di­tional media respond­ing and adapt­ing to changes in the media landscape?

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Add your colleague’s blogs’ RSS feeds to your fee­dreader account and add the course blogroll OPML
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Sign up on the wiki for the pre­sen­ta­tion for which you will lead dis­cus­sion.
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
*  Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Saveri, A., Rhein­gold, H., & Vian, K., (2005). Tech­nolo­gies of Coöper­a­tion. Palo Alto CA: Insti­tute for the Future.
* Levine, F., Locke, C., Searls, D. & Wein­berger, D. (1999). The Clue­train Man­i­festo. The End of Busi­ness as Usual.
- 95 The­ses: http://www.cluetrain.com/book/95-theses.html
- Ele­va­tor Rap: http://www.cluetrain.com/book/elevator.html
- Intro­duc­tion: http://www.cluetrain.com/book/introduction.html
- Mar­kets Are Con­ver­sa­tions: http://www.cluetrain.com/book/markets.html
- The Hyper­linked Orga­ni­za­tion: http://www.cluetrain.com/book/hyperorg.html

Ses­sion 3 Sep­tem­ber 8, 2010
Theme: blog­ging con­cepts, ethics, terms, tools, and tech­niques. Wikis. RSS. LBS.

Blog­ging cul­ture: authen­tic­ity, trans­parency, author­ity, influ­ence, ethics, and cred­i­bil­ity
Writ­ing for the web
Basics of HTML and CSS
Track­backs, links, tags, side­bars, blogrolls, wid­gets, and feeds
Blog search engines
Real­time search
Blog­ging work­flow, tools, and browser add-ons
Wikis: PBWiki, Social­Text, Medi­aWiki
Wikipedia
Pub­lish­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing your media online; syn­di­cat­ing your media and con­tent to your com­mu­ni­ties through RSS
Mon­i­tor­ing your rep­u­ta­tion, your brands and your key­words
Set­ting up feeds and alerts for the infor­ma­tion that mat­ters to you
Face­book feeds, Tum­blr, Pos­ter­ous, Friend­Feed
Location-Based Ser­vices: Foursquare, Gowalla, Face­book Places, Brightkite, MyTown, Google Lat­i­tude, Loopt, scvngr

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Tra­vers, J., Mil­gram, S., (1969). An Exper­i­men­tal Study of the Small World Prob­lem. Sociom­e­try, Vol. 32, No. 4. (Dec., 1969), pp. 425–443
* Gra­novet­ter, M. S., (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Soci­ol­ogy, Vol­ume 78, Issue 6, (May, 1973), 1360–1380
* Knorr Cetina, K.D. and Brueg­ger, U. ( 2000). The Mar­ket as an Object of Attach­ment: Explor­ing Post-Social Rela­tions in Finan­cial Mar­kets. Cana­dian Jour­nal of Soci­ol­ogy 25(2): 141–68
* Counts, S., & Stecher, K. (2009) Self-Presentation of Per­son­al­ity Dur­ing Online Pro­file Cre­ation. ICWSM ’09. * Adams, Paul (2010). The Real Life Social Net­work. PDF doc­u­ment avail­able online
* Meeker, M., Devitt, S., Wu, L. (2010). Inter­net Trends. Mor­gan Stan­ley Research.

Ses­sion 4 Sep­tem­ber 15, 2010
Theme: social net­works, iden­tity, and your brand

Your life online: your brand per­sona vs the brand you rep­re­sent
Your online CV: busi­ness net­work­ing with LinkedIn
Social Graph: 6 degrees of sep­a­ra­tion, in the­ory and prac­tice
Social object: friend-based social­ity vs object-centered social­ity
Online com­mu­ni­ties and social net­works: becom­ing an active mem­ber and par­tic­i­pat­ing
The social media starfish and the con­ver­sa­tion prism
OpenID and Oauth
Social net­work­ing for pro­mot­ing peo­ple, prod­ucts, and ser­vices
How does social net­work design and archi­tec­ture affect par­tic­i­pa­tion? What else affects par­tic­i­pa­tion?
News feeds, activ­ity streams, life streams
Com­par­ing the plat­forms: LinkedIn, MySpace, Face­book, Hi5, Orkut, and more
Face­book apps and Open Social
Whose data is it? Closed gar­dens and net­work data portability

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Please con­sult the course wiki

Ses­sion 5 Sep­tem­ber 22, 2010
Theme: Copy­rights, DRM, Images, video, social bookmarking

Pho­tog­ra­phy on the web, Flickr
Copy­right and Cre­ative Com­mons
Har­ness­ing col­lec­tive intel­li­gence: social book­marks, folk­sonomies, col­lab­o­ra­tive and active fil­ter­ing
Nor­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion vs. Power laws
Net Neu­tral­ity
Video for the web
Medi­as­nacks. Film­ing, edit­ing, and pub­lish­ing a short video online
Record­ing an audio inter­view, edit­ing, and upload­ing it
Use of images, graphs, and maps to illus­trate texts

Guest lec­turer:
* Jes­sica Kizorek, Founder, Two Par­rot Productions

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Hae­woon Kwak, Changhyun Lee, Hosung Park, and Sue Moon (2010). What is Twit­ter, a Social Net­work or a News Media? Pro­ceed­ings of the 19^th Inter­na­tional World Wide Web (WWW) Con­fer­ence, April 26–30, 2010, Raleigh NC (USA)
* Zhao, D., Rosson, M.B. (2009). How and why peo­ple Twit­ter: the role that micro-blogging plays in infor­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion at work, Pro­ceed­ings of the ACM 2009 inter­na­tional con­fer­ence on Sup­port­ing group work, May 10–13, 2009, Sani­bel Island, Florida, USA
* Brooks, A., Churchill, E.F. (2010). Tune in, Tweet on, Twit out: Infor­ma­tion Snack­ing on Twit­ter. CHI 2010, April 10–15, 2010, Atlanta, Geor­gia, USA

Ses­sion 6 Sep­tem­ber 29, 2010
Theme: social media for fun and profit

Spe­cial guests: local blog­gers and jour­nal­ists are invited to class for a round­table dis­cus­sion on their experiences.

Dis­cus­sion top­ics:
When and how did the invited blog­gers start using social media?
How has social media affected their lives and their careers?
What were some of the highs and lows?
How can social media com­ple­ment your career?
How can one make a liv­ing from social media?
Build­ing a per­sona and a brand
Cre­ative writ­ing on the web

Theme: your iden­tity online and offline.

Online behav­ior affects cred­i­bil­ity, author­ity, and influ­ence
Writ­ing for the web
Build­ing your per­sona and brand
Mee­tups and twee­t­ups
What about pri­vacy, secu­rity, and ethics?

Guest lec­turer:
* Maria de los Ange­les, Writer, Blog­ger
* Car­los Miller, Pho­tog­ra­pher, Blog­ger
* Patrick Bar­banes, Con­sul­tant, Blogger

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Please con­sult the course wiki

Ses­sion 7 Octo­ber 6, 2010
Theme: vir­tual worlds

Vir­tual worlds exist in many forms, and many more are sure to be cre­ated. We first dis­cuss World of War­craft, and Sec­ondLife, the immer­sive vir­tual world.

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* L. Wu, et al., “Vaue of social net­work — A Large-scale analy­sis on net­work struc­ture impact to finan­cial rev­enue of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy con­sul­tants,” pre­sented at the Win­ter Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Con­fer­ence, Salt Lake City, 2009
* Paek, T., Gamon, M., Counts, S., Chick­er­ing, M., & Dhesi, A. (2010) Pre­dict­ing the Impor­tance of News­feed Posts and Social Net­work Friends. AAAI ’10

Ses­sion 8 Octo­ber 13, 2010
Theme: get­ting things done online, col­lec­tive action, and shar­ing economies. Cloud com­put­ing, SaaS, open source, browsers, and standards

Dis­cus­sion top­ics:
What can be done alone? What can be done col­lec­tively? How do indi­vid­u­als build up social cap­i­tal?  How can self-interest be lever­aged to cre­ate pub­lic goods? How do peo­ple orga­nize online into groups for coöper­a­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and col­lec­tive action? What are the rela­tion­ships between col­lec­tive action, com­mu­nity, and democ­racy? What mech­a­nisms facil­i­tate col­lec­tive action and com­mu­nity? Do social net­works allow for new forms of pro­duc­tion (ie., “non-market peer production”)?

Overview of open source cul­ture and soft­ware. What fac­tors lead to suc­cess? What moti­vates contributors?

Does most of your data reside on your hard drive, or in the cloud? Which data is where? Why? Which fac­tors lead to greater migra­tion of data online?

Does the desk­top mat­ter any­more? How does the browser con­tinue to change, and why? What about new desk­top (and mobile) clients? Also, we take a look at browser extensions.

Overview of soft­ware as a ser­vice providers and plat­forms, for pri­vate, per­sonal busi­ness, and cor­po­rate use. What are the busi­ness models?

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Please con­sult the course wiki

Ses­sion 9 Octo­ber 20, 2010
Theme: the chang­ing role of PR and marketing

How has online par­tic­i­pa­tion in social media affected brand, posi­tion­ing, adver­tis­ing, and pub­lic rela­tions? What role for community?

We explore case stud­ies of suc­cesses and fail­ure in social media com­mu­ni­ca­tions by brands. Are com­pa­nies hav­ing a hard time adjust­ing, and if so, why?

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Please con­sult the course wiki

Ses­sion 10 Novem­ber 3, 2010
Theme: the chang­ing role of PR and marketing

How has online par­tic­i­pa­tion in social media affected brand, posi­tion­ing, adver­tis­ing, and pub­lic rela­tions? What role for community?

We explore case stud­ies of suc­cesses and fail­ure in social media com­mu­ni­ca­tions by brands. Are com­pa­nies hav­ing a hard time adjust­ing, and if so, why?

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Please con­sult the course wiki

Ses­sion 11 Novem­ber 10, 2010
Theme: cit­i­zen journalism

What are the mod­els for jour­nal­ism online? How do they lever­age the com­mu­nity? What are the ele­ments of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism sites? How is the infor­ma­tion struc­tured? In which ways do read­ers and the com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pate? How to main­tain rel­e­vance and qual­ity? If you could build a cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism site, what would it look like?

Assign­ments:
*  Read the assigned read­ings for the next class and be pre­pared to dis­cuss.
*  Keep up to date with the feeds in your fee­dreader and com­ment when appro­pri­ate
* Pub­lish two blog posts, with links to some­thing on the Web that is rel­e­vant to class top­ics, as described in the syl­labus and con­text of the read­ings. The blog will be eval­u­ated on the qual­ity of engage­ment with themes of the class, the clar­ity of expres­sion, and the cul­ti­va­tion of com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar posts and com­ments. Tag your blog posts with “umsocmed”.
*  Con­tribute one com­ment to the blog post of another class mate each week
Post to Twit­ter daily (except weekends).

Read­ings:
* Please con­sult the course wiki

Ses­sion 12 Novem­ber 17, 2010 — FINAL EXAM

Ses­sion 13 Novem­ber 24, 2010 — Thanks­giv­ing Recess

Ses­sion 14 Decem­ber 1, 2010 — STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

Ses­sion 15 Decem­ber 8, 2010 — STUDENT PRESENTATIONS