Week

Lecture [content]

1

What’s so social about social media? In this week’s introductory seminar, we will explore social media from a media and communications perspective, and from a market perspective that examines neoliberal rationales. As such, we will unpack concepts such as what does it mean to be social, what’s social about social media (aren’t all media social?), representation, online identity, publishing and self-representation. We will also investigate the concept of ‘platform’: social media platforms are a combination of many things including hosting provider, access enablers, curatorial tools, rule-maker, and amplifiers. Finally, we will begin to unpack what different forms of capital are present within culture, as a precursor to understanding intermediaries across social media.

Key Reading:

Lipschultz, J. H. (2018). Introduction to Social Media Concepts Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics (pp. 1-38). New York: Routledge.

Stevens, R., Gilliard-Matthews, S., Dunaev, J., Woods, M. K., & Brawner, B. M. (2017). The digital hood: Social media use among youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods. New Media & Society, 19(6), 950–967.

Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). Platform Instagram (pp.8–38). Cambridge: Polity.

Additional Reading:

Bourdieu, P. (1983). The Forms of Capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 112-141). New York: Greenwood. Bonilla, Y., & Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), 4–17.

Practical Exercises:

In our three-hour in-class seminar, we will develop our professional online identities by constructing our biographies and profile images. Through a selection process to reveal the appropriate professional platforms, we will then build our online professional profiles. We will also establish our Twitter profiles and join the Facebook page [www.facebook.com/USydSocMed] for MECO6936 to enable class interactivity for the remainder of the semester. We will also go through the editorial process of the class blog which is the central repository for all class content and publishing exercises.

2

Institutions and Social Media.

In week 2, we examine how social media is being used in a number of professional industries, especially journalism and public relations. In this context we will explore how content is both found and distributed across social media. For example, it makes sense for journalists to publish their work accordingly across a number of social media platforms, but are they able to use social media as a means to find journalism? Similarly, how might strategic communications professionals use social media to push and pull content? The lens of ‘produsage’ becomes important here, and we will explore participatory culture and understand the motivations behind users contributing to cultural production

schemes. What is user-created content? Why do projects and institutions engage crowd sourcing? How is collaboration played out through social media? We will also explore the agency of unseen actors such as interfaces, code, algorithms, and technology and power. Finally, we introduce the cultural intermediary as a key agent who operates across social media as a ‘capital translator’ – one who translate cultural capital into economic value, for example.

Key Reading:

Bishop, S. (2018). Anxiety, panic and self- optimization: Inequalities and the YouTube algorithm. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 24(1), 69-84.

Lipschultz, J. H. (2018). Social Media in Public Relations Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics (pp. 97-130). New York: Routledge.

Bailey, M. (2016). Redefining Representation. Screen Bodies, 1(1), 71–86.

Additional Reading:

Cotter, K. (2018). Playing the visibility game: How digital influencers and algorithms negotiate influence on Instagram. New Media & Society, 21(4), 895–913.

Seo, H., Houston, J. B., Knight, L. A. T., Kennedy, E. J., & Inglish, A. B. (2014). Teens' social media use and collective action. New Media & Society, 16(6), 883-902.

Practical Exercises:

Building on our professional online identity from last week, we will explore Hootsuite as a platform that connects services and provides basic data analysis. We will also schedule automated social media updating through its functionality and generate reports on key concepts such as ‘reach’ and ‘engagement’. We introduce basic social media analytics and explore why these are useful and how they guide social media strategies.

3

Social Media Metrics and Mobile Innovations

This week, we dive deeper into social media metrics and begin to critically examine metrics and analytics that surround social media communication. What are useful metrics in social media, and how might they be used for content production? How are platforms, advertisers and marketeers manipulating metrics to introduce false value? How can metrics be use for social good? With a background of social media metrics and analytics, we then turn our attention to mobile media to explore the impact mobile technologies have on social media communication. What are the industries that surround social media? How has Instagram created its own economy? How do entrepreneurs operate in these environments? This leads us to explore the importance of internet memes and how these cultural artefacts represent varying levels of cultural capital. We return to: who can translate this form of cultural capital?

Key Reading:

Lipschultz, J. H. (2018). Social Media Metrics and Analytics Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics (pp. 157-182). New York: Routledge.

Freelon, D. (2017). Campaigns in control: Analyzing controlled interactivity and message discipline on Facebook. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 14(2), 168–181.

Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). Economies Instagram (pp.100–148). Cambridge: Polity.

Additional Reading:

Dijck, J. v. (2013). Facebook and the Imperative of Sharing The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Baym, N. (2012). Fans or Friends? Seeing Social Media Audiences as Musicians Do. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 9(2), 286 - 316.

Practical Exercises:

Design a social media strategy and design a user engagement strategy that will assist you in your final pieces of assessment. Having established your area of interest to develop your social media campaign, you will now build the strategy to engage your audience and users.

4

Social Media Ethics and Regulation

This week, we focus on the frameworks in which social media operate. We explore the complexities of regulating social media practice at the global, regional, and local perspectives. How do we provide safe and legal communication spaces across social media? What happens when things go awry? How do we monitor social media spaces to ensure there is equality and a variety of voices?

By looking at the recent Australian Digital Platforms Inquiry, it is possible to understand the complexities of operating in social media ecology.

We finally look at the role ‘digital’ intermediaries play within the social media landscape, with particular focus on multichannel networks (MCNs).

Key Reading:

Lipschultz, J. H. (2018). Social Media Ethics Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics (pp. 271-296). New York: Routledge.

Anne L. Washington and Rachel S. Kuo. 2020. Whose Side are Ethics Codes On? Power, Responsibility and the Social Good. In Proceedings of ACM Fairness Accountability Transparency conference (FAT’20). ACM, Barcelona, Spain, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3351095.3372844

ACCC. (2019). Executive Summary Digital Platforms Inquiry - Final Report(pp.4–29). Canberra.

Additional Reading:

Lobato, R. (2016). The cultural logic of digital intermediaries: YouTube multichannel networks. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 22(4), 348-360.

Till, C. (2020). Propaganda through ‘reflexive control’ and the mediated construction of reality. New Media & Society, Online First, 1–17.

Activity:

Research the three levels of social media regulation here in Australia (International, regional, and local regulations). Find a recent social media moment that is legally or ethically challenging, and begin to work through how you would resolve this situation under those regulatory processes. How might this differ if the same social media issue happened in China, or Brazil?

Find the work of a user spreading disinformation. Explore what they did, how they did it and what were the consequences of such an activity. Think through issues such as, were their activities illegal? Did they harm an individual or group of individuals? Did they demonstrate characteristics of culture jamming? Was there any benefit/implication of their actions?

5

Social Media Practice

In this week’s seminar, we use social media as a lens to rethink our practice. What might be considered ‘best practice’ for social media users? Given the regulatory discussions of last week, how is your thinking challenged by ‘best’ practice? How might we as social media producers embody best practice, and indeed transfer those practices to our managed communities?

We also look at how social media and cultural production is aligned with media organisations. Working on a best practice model, how do media organisations encourage users to engage with their material? Do they engage users to co-create material with them? How could we include this thinking into a social media strategy and/or campaign?

You are required to also watch the Merchants of Cool to understand how certain agents perform cultural translation tasks such as discovering fringe culture and converting that into the mainstream, i.e. “killing it” as one of the producers note. How might cultural intermediaries align/misalign with ‘cool hunters’?

Key Reading:

Lipschultz, J. H. (2018). Best Practices in Social Media Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics (pp. 297-318). New York: Routledge.

Hutchinson, J. (2017). Participation in Media Organizations Cultural intermediaries: Audience participation and media organisations (pp. 87-106). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). Cultures Instagram (pp.149–173). Cambridge: Polity.

Watch:

PBS. (2006). Merchants of Cool. Frontline. New York: PBS. Available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view/

Activity:

Find a digital influencer on YouTube and another on Instagram. Undertake a content/discourse analysis on their pages to understand how they operate, what they produce, how/if they include the audience, and what the possible benefits are of their best practice? Indeed, what is their ‘best practice’?

6

Futures of Social Media

Each concept explored until this week has been building towards a summative understanding of how decentralised communication models operate. This is a complex scenario when combining participatory communicative activities and social media with organisations, considering organisations are tasked with eliminating group complexity and communicating a central message. As many of you will be moving on to social media roles within organisations, this is a chance to explore how many large-scale corporations use social media, both effectively and ineffectively, to involve their clients, employees, users and publics.

The students will explore the tensions between hierarchies and heterarchies, virtual worlds, open culture and institutional online communities.

This week is dedicated to exploring the futures of social media practice, with an emphasis on algorithmic culture. How are algorithms defining what we consume and how we produce material? How is this shaping our social discourse? What is the impact of algorithmic recommendation systems?

Key Reading:

Noble, S. U. (2016). Traversing Technologies. The Scholar & Feminist Online, 13(3), n.p.

Hutchinson, J. (2017). Algorithmic Culture and Cultural Intermediation Cultural Intermediaries: Audience participation and media organisations (pp. 201-220). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). From the Instagram of Everything to the Everything of Instagram, Instagram (pp.191–217). Cambridge: Polity.

Additional Reading:

Hallinan, B., & Striphas, T. (2014). Recommended for you: The Netflix Prize and the production of algorithmic culture. New Media & Society, Online First, 1-21.

Lohmann, F. v. Your Intermediary is your Destiny. In M. Mandiberg (Ed.), The Social Media Reader (pp. 170 - 178). New York: New York University Press.

Activity:

Explore the YouTube algorithm. How does it work? What is at play behind the algorithm? What resources online can you find to trick the algorithm (i.e. hacks)? What are the implications of the YouTube algorithm?

7

Students are asked to present their social media projects to the class. Additionally, we will explore WordPress as a content management system that facilitates an internal collaborative publishing tool.