Media & Society

Catalog description

This course is a general survey of the various forms of social media and how they are used in our community, Minnesota, the USA, and around the world. Students will study both the theoretical and practical applications of social communication on society as they gain hands-on experience running social media accounts and improving their production skills. Students will gain an understanding about the history of social media and the attention economy, surveillance capitalism, the neurology of distraction, media ecology and technology as environment, and emergent forms of governance, and various models of Artificial Intelligence. The legal, moral, and ethical aspects of social media will be discussed with regards to leading platforms—TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Special attention to Indigenous lifeways will inform and guide a pragmatic approach to navigating the possibilities and dangers of techno-dependence in the era of social media.