MDST 1002: Introduction to Social Media
3 Credit Hours
This course introduces network structures and principles, the technology and infrastructures that allows them to flourish, and the cultures that grow up through and around them. It also explores how social media enables community, how it assembles and empowers agents of change and how design informs individual and group behavior.
Learning Objectives
- Identify key network concepts, vocabulary and conceptual literacy;
- Consider dimensions of protocols and power in social media use;
- Contrast the social capital models of various social networks;
- Consider ways social media is used to promote social change;
- Examine concepts around “privacy” and identity in a social media context;
- Evaluate considerations of copyright and intellectual property in the share economy.
In this course, you will
Gather insights from family and friends about their perspective values of social media use to help inform class discussions;
Engage with fellow classmates in analyzing case studies;
Survey examples of social media use.
J. Richard Stevens
Dr. J. Richard Stevens teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in new media theory, popular culture and digital media skills.
His research delves into the intersection of ideological formation and media message dissemination, with studies such as how cultural messages are formed and passed through popular culture, how technology infrastructure affects the delivery of media messages, communication technology policy, and how media and technology platforms are changing American public discourse.
His particular interests include the relationship between technology diffusion patterns and American privacy norms, the communication of science in culture through both news and popular media, conflicts of cultural values regarding digital texts and copyright law, the role of software interface in communicating social norms, and the framing of nationalist ideology in comic books and children’s cartoons.
Dr. Stevens holds a BS in Advertising and an MS in Digital Media, both from Abilene Christian University, and a PhD in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.