From Silicon Valley to the World: A Critical History of Social Media - MA Seminar 1 3301-KBS1LUT
The history of social media since the beginning of the 21st century has been a continuous success story. Suffice it to say that no technology in the history of mankind has spread so quickly and on such a scale. It is now impossible to imagine a world without social media; it is an organic part of our reality and virtually every aspect of our lives (entertainment, communication, knowledge, dating, etc.) is now mediated by one platform or another. But at least since Brexit and Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US election, social media platforms have come undermore critical scrutiny in terms of their (negative) impact on (non)digital world.
The first year of this MA seminar will present key themes and issues of social media.
Selected topics:
- Dichotomies of new media and the process of mediatisation
- From Silicon Valley into the world - History and ideology of the Internet
- Codes and algorithms - Web 1.0, Web 2.0 to Web 3.0; GAFAM and gatekeeping
- What do you meme? - Characteristics of internet communication
- Immersion, interaction, participation, gamification - Sociocultural practices
- Google's truth - Post-truth, fake news, manipulation
- You'll never walk alone - Activism and how to coordinate social action
- The world according to Zuckerberg - Questions of individual and collective identity
- Social media asocialities - Forms of social control
- My place on Earth - Cyberspace and the metaverse
- Fit & sweet - Influencer culture
- Love, death + Robots - Introduction to AI
- The present of the future - Questions about MC regulation.
Type of course
Course coordinators
Assessment criteria
Presentations, analytical essays, individual and group research.
Active participation in the New Media in Contemporary Culture series.
To pass the first year of the seminar it is necessary to prepare a developed outline of the dissertation with an attached bibliography of 5000-7000 words.
Evaluation criteria:
- clear structure
- clear presentation of the research problem and the subject literature
- in-depth knowledge of the subject
- use of appropriate research sources
- correct formatting (MLA)
Bibliography
Boyd, Danah. It’s Complicated. The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven, Yale, 2014.
Dijck, Jose van. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013.
Donovan, Joan, Emily Dreyfuss, Brian Friedberg. Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America. Bloomsbury, 2022.
Durham, Meenakshi Gigi, Dougles M. Kellner (eds.). Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. 2nd edition, Wiley Blackwell, 2012.
Fisher, Max. The Chaos Machine. The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World. Little, Brown and Company, 2022.
Levinson, Paul. New New Media. Pearson, 2016.
Page, Ruth. Narratives Online. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2018.
Page, Ruth, Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction. London and New York, Routledge, 2013.
Langmia, Kehbuma, Tia C.M. Tyree. Social Media. Culture and Identity. London, Lexington Books, 2017.
Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA, and London, MIT Press, 2014.
Thomas, Bronwen, Julia Round. Real Lives, Celebrity Stories. New York, Bloomsbury, 2014.
Tierney, Thérèse F., The Public Space of Social Media. Connected Cultures of the Network Society. London and New York, Routledge, 2013.
Varoufakis, Yanis. Technofeudalism. The Bodley Head Ltd., 2023.
Wiggins, Bradley, The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture. Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality. London and New York, Routledge, 2019.
White, Andrew. Digital Media and Society. Houndsmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
The Digital Media and Society Series available in the Institute of English Studies Library; e.g. about TikTok, YouTube, Instagram etc.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: