PTC 629 The Theory & Practice of Social Media

In recent years social mediums have seen tremendous growth. Facebook and Twitter allow people to interact with, influence, and potentially millions of others. In fact, Facebook, as of mid-2015, has 1.5 billion users that any user is "connected" to, if only in a theorhetical networked manner.

Social media (SM) is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. It transform broadcast or amss media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).

As users of SM, we are also designers of SM, although this design process may be minimally conscious. As deliberate designers of social media, we are responsible for thinking about the impact of our creations. Some people envision a future in which technology expands our sociability, making an extraordinarily creative, communicative and cooperative world. But others envision a dystopic future where friendship has become a conduit for marketing and awareness of universal surveillance choreographs our every move.

In an earlier incarnation, this course was offered as PTC 698 "Design of Social Media." Now, as 629, "The Theory & Practice of Social Media," it retains much of that practice and real-world application approach while adding elements of social media theory.