Social Media Technology and Ethics

Catalog description

Social media platforms are complex technology environments shaped by infrastructure, interface design, data collection, algorithms, business models, and human behavior. This course examines how social media systems support profiles, content sharing, feeds, communication, personalization, advertising, and large-scale user participation. The course analyzes how platform design and automated decision-making influence engagement, information exposure, accessibility, trust, and digital well-being. The course also addresses privacy, security, misinformation, identity, content moderation, algorithmic bias, governance, and other forms of digital harm. Through a recurring platform scenario and guided AI-assisted prototyping project, students can design and evaluate a responsible social media technology concept. No programming experience is required.