Introduction to Social Media

MDST 1002

This course introduces students to concepts for better understanding online social media—the technology and infrastructures that allow social networks to flourish, and the cultures that grow up through and around them. It explores how social media enables community, how it assembles and empowers agents of change, and how design informs individual and group behavior.

Students should expect to come away with an enlarged perspective on social media, including the histories, public policies, and global forces shaping the apps and networks widely used today. Projects invite students to apply these insights critically and constructively.

• Understand key concepts in social media and media studies
• Describe and analyze in detail an existing social network
• Apply insights into a proposal for a new network or feature

Nathan Schneider (“Professor Schneider,” he/him)
Contact via Canvas Conversations (tips)
Armory Building, 1B24
Office hours: Wednesday at 3–5 p.m., or by appointment
Website: nathanschneider.info

The TAs in this class are accomplished graduate students in the Media Studies department with active research agendas. They will work with the instructor on teaching, guiding class exercises, and evaluation. Each TA will have a section of students throughout the course. Take the opportunity to get to know your TA, as they are your main point of interface for questions and concerns.

TAs will do their best to get back to you within two business days. Please plan ahead on the assumption that you will not hear back during weekends, holidays, or evenings.

The coursework includes four equally weighted components. These all revolve around the expectation of participation in class sessions.

Class meetings will generally include a short quiz. It will present questions about the week's readings as well as opportunities for the teaching team to check in on your progress and feedback. Quizzes will be conducted on Canvas, with a password provided in class. You can repeat the quiz in class if you like. Be sure to bring a Canvas-friendly device to class.

Quizzes are meant to be taken individually, in class, without referencing external materials. Deviating from these norms will be regarded as a violation of the campus Honor Code.

If you need to miss class due to illness, religious observance, or emergency, please inform your TA ahead of time. Additionally, at the end of the semester, the lowest quiz grade will be dropped.

In and out of class, we will use a private, self-managed social network to communicate at mediastudies.social. It utilizes Mastodon, an open-source software platform designed to connect with the Fediverse, but we will only use it to connect with each other.

Each week before recitation on Friday, students should demonstrate their engagement with the reading in posts on mediastudies.social. This consists of two parts:

• Complete the Quest, which is specified in each week's assignment, in a post or thread (by posting and replying to each previous post) using the hashtag #q[number]
• Reply to at least two other students' Quests with analytic, critical, and respectful responses

Posts from a given week will be evaluated to ensure that, collectively, they include:

• Completion of the Quest in a thoughtful and creative fashion
• Constructive contribution to the class discussion in replies
• Evidence of comprehension of, and engagement with, the assigned materials

Extra-credit bounties may be distributed to authors of the most successful posts. Criteria will vary as we evaluate the priorities of our shared discussion.

Around the midterm, students will produce a how-to video about a social media platform—a “missing manual” to introduce a new user to what it is, how to use it, and what to watch out for. Today, most commercial tools are designed to be used without any documentation. But what do we lose when we don't really understand something before using it?

First, choose a platform that you have never regularly used yourself from the provided list. Try it out, and learn everything you can about it from a variety of published sources.

Second, identify a specific intended audience. Audiences might include parents, younger siblings, a competing business, aspiring influencers, or others.

Third, produce a 5–6 minute video appropriately formatted to introduce the platform to your specific intended audience (and make clear who they are). Demonstrate how the platform works and how to navigate it. Additionally, turn in a bibliography in APA style of 6–8 sources you used in your research.

Be sure to meet the following evaluation criteria:

• High-quality video presentation appropriate in tone and content for the intended audience
• Explanation of the platform's basic use, including affordances and disaffordances
• Analysis of the platform's history, business model, and ownership
• Thoughtful, explicit engagement with at least two concepts covered so far in the course textbook
• Evidence of impressive independent research in both the video and bibliography

Turn in both the video (a playable link) and the bibliography (a PDF). The recommended strategy for creating your video is to use your campus Zoom account and make a “cloud” recording with screen sharing on; you can then share the video directly from Zoom.

The final project for the course is a 5–6 minute pitch video with a clear, concise slide deck. Here, you propose a new social-media network, or an improvement to an existing one. The goal is to put what you've learned to use through constructive thinking. Your pitch should:

• Identify a problem, supported with evidence
• Propose a solution to it, along with why we should consider it plausible
• Establish a value proposition for why the most important stakeholders (executives, hackers, investors, activists?) should support it

Your pitch will be evaluated according to these expectations:

• Complete pitch that fulfills the assignment and articulates the problem, solution, and value proposition
• Elegant, stylistically correct slide deck that illustrates the major points
• Originality and plausibility of the proposal
• Evidence of impressive outside research, with at least ten sources—including scholarly sources, journalism, and industry data—correctly cited with APA format in slides
• Thoughtful, explicit engagement with at least two concepts from the course textbook that demonstrates comprehension and critical thinking

Citing sources in APA format involves in-text citation (Author, YEAR) as well as a full reference list (i.e., a bibliography) at the end of your presentation. Consult one of the many guides to APA citations available online.

Turn in both the video (a playable link) and the slides (a PDF). The recommended strategy for creating your video is to use your campus Zoom account and make a “cloud” recording with screen sharing on; you can then share the video directly from Zoom.

Grading will carefully follow the expectations stated in this syllabus, as well as the rubrics for each assignment in Canvas.

If you need an extension on any assignment, consult your TA ahead of time. They are not obligated to grant one. Late work will be penalized one letter grade per week, beginning with an automatic B immediately after the due date.

Plagiarism and similar lapses in academic honesty can result in no credit for the assignment and referral to campus authorities. Generative AI is permitted but should be credited as such and must not serve as a substitute for doing your own thinking and work.

Based on the stated percentage structure, grades will be awarded as follows: A (94-100), A- (90-93), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (63-66), D- (60-62), F (0-59). The minimum passing grade is 60.

Together, we agree to:

• Work together to foster a respectful, mature, convivial community based on mutual learning through our diverse perspectives, following basic standards of class etiquette
• Be present in our interactions together in class, avoiding the use of screen devices for purposes other than coursework
• Respect student privacy, keeping any materials or statements shared in class confidential unless permission is granted to do otherwise
• Adhere to all university policies, as well as course guidelines on academic honesty; we take responsibility for understanding them and the relevant procedures.
• Accommodate disabilities and other diverse needs, making use of our own capacities and campus resources

The course revolves around a free, open-access textbook, hereafter Humans:

• Diana Daley and students at the University of Arizona, Humans R Social Media - 2024 "Living Book" Edition (University of Arizona, 2024)

Assignments include all content on the linked pages, including the self-quizzes and “related content.”

For extra credit, students may propose corrections or improvements to the textbook. Each substantive improvement is worth one point of course credit, up to a maximum of three per student. Submit proposals in the dedicated discussion on Canvas.

Each week additionally includes an “Artifact”—a primary source that we will examine, dissect, and reflect upon. Some Artifacts are fairly extensive, and you're expected to explore as you like, not necessarily to study the whole thing.

Some weeks we will also have a guest speaker. Please plan to familiarize yourself with the guest speaker before they come so you are well-equipped to ask questions.

Humans: “Preface: About this Book” and “Introduction”

Artifact: bell hooks, “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance,” in Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (South End Press, 1990)

Quest: None

Humans: “Identity”

Artifact: Angela Washko, “Performance for Multi-User Online Environments (Before COVID-19)” (2020)

Quest: Produce a multimedia testimony about how social media has (or has not) shaped your sense of your own identity; utilize not only text but also images, video, or audio

Humans: “Old to New Media”

Artifact: Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974)

Quest: Use a piece of pre-Internet social-media technology and provide a report on the experience, including visual documentation

Judy Malloy, “The Origins of Social Media,” pp. 3-33, in Judy Malloy (ed.), Social Media Archaeology and Poetics (MIT Press, 2016) [campus login required]

Artifact: First Versions: Internet

Quest: Create a timeline of major events in your relationship with social media

Humans: “Privacy and Publics”

Artifact: Civic Signals (2021)

Quest: Introduce us to an online public that you know well, explaining its various norms, shared commitments, and practices

Humans: “Algorithms”

Artifact: Shalini Kantayya (dir.), Coded Bias (2020)

Quest: Describe and depict, in as much detail as you can, an algorithm that you encounter or use in your daily life—or one that you want to exist

Humans: “Regulation”

Artifact: 2023 AI regulations from the United States and China

Quest: Devise a law that would improve social-media regulation, explaining its rationale, how it would be enforced, and what new problems it might cause

“Global Influencers’ Content Creation Strategies: Negotiating with Platform Affordances to Practice Vernacular Creativity,” Media, Culture & Society 47, no. 1 (2024)

Artifact: Rest of World and Timothy B. Lee, “40 Maps That Explain the Internet,” Vox (June 2, 2014)

Quest: Choose a story in Rest of World about a country outside the United States, and explain how the Internet might feel different in that country than it does here

Humans: “Equity and Gender” and “Activism”

Artifact: Feminist Principles for the Internet (2016)

Quest: Propose a manifesto of principles that you believe would make the Internet more just

Humans: “Information”

Artifact: The Media Manipulation Casebook

Quest: Choose a case from The Media Manipulation Casebook and devise a technological or social countermeasure that could defeat it

Humans: “Relationships”

Artifact: Ingrid Burrington, “The Center for Missed Connections”

Quest: Create a screenshot of an invented social network that connects people in a novel way

Humans: “Art” and “Memes”

Artifact: Know Your Meme

Quest: Create a piece of media designed to spread, and explain why you think it will

Humans: “Wellness”

Artifact: Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, “Social Media and Mental Health: A Collaborative Review” (ongoing)

Quest: Design a set of rules for a social-media network for kids

Humans: “Our Transformed Selves”

Artifact: Werner Herzog (dir.), Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016)

Quest: None—focus on your pitches!

[ Notes ]