Intro to Qualitative Research: Social Media Apps and Video Content Creation

Catalog description

Short-video apps, such as TikTok, have revealed themselves to be highly accessible and increasingly ubiquitous in regards to online social interaction and are currently the most popular social media among mostly young(er) users. This course focuses on how humans as users interact with and understand social technology and how the use of social media apps is connected to and integrated into our everyday life by asking questions like: What are users' motivations to participate in video creation and sharing on social media? What are their practices, strategies, and routines in creating short-form videos as part of digital online culture? What do they know about socio-technical aspects in using short-video apps and creating short-form video content? How does their understanding of socio-technological aspects influence their use of social media apps? This course is designed to enable students to develop and conduct their own individual research project. For this, students will learn how to design, conduct, and analyze qualitative interviews to research socio-technical, cultural, and political perspectives of usage of and engagement with short-form videos and short-video apps, such as TikTok. The course instructor will closely mentor and supervise students' research projects throughout the semester and will provide expertise and background in qualitative methods and social media research to guide students through the research process.