UFCFJJ 15 M

UFCFJJ-15-M Social Media and Web Science

Overview

How to harness the power of social media for impact and insight. Social media research approaches and practice.

Objectives

1. Compare and contrast the range of social media tools available and their relative strengths and weaknesses
2. Identify socio-technical factors leading to successful communication, engagement and collaboration online, as well as those factors leading to misinformation, conflict, injustice or exclusion
3. Design for and evaluate impact through the creative selection, deployment and scientific monitoring of social media systems
4. Carry out research on social, business or societal phenomena by mining information on social media and the web and undertaking qualitative, quantitative and visual analysis

Curriculum

History, trends and global patterns in social media and the web.

The current range of social media tools and their relative strengths; social UI patterns and practice.

Best practice in social media usage; cultural and ethical dimensions of social media and social media research.

Theoretical models of engagement, persuasion and social behaviour online.

Social media metrics and impact; use of social media in the workplace; social media strategies and their evaluation; case studies.

Web science principles; relevant socio-technical, philosophical, psychological and sociological models/theory.

Social media, the web and society: politics, disaster management and governance; diversity, bias and the diffusion of information; privacy, security and trust.

Collective intelligence and online communities; crowd sourcing and social machines.

Tools and methods of social media and web-based research: archiving; data mining; algorithms and inference; social network analysis; visualisation.

Assessment

Group Report (50%)

Poster Presentation (50%)