The course is about social media and the broader context of digital economy within which social media platforms operate. The course provides an analysis of social media as multi-sided digital platforms and the distinctive ways they serve the interests of a range of stakeholders, including platform owners, users, advertisers and third parties such as start-ups and data analytic companies. The course pays due attention to how user participation is engineered to procure data on users that sustain social media as business organisations. The course combines theory and case study examples that illustrate the variety of contexts in which social media companies are active today.
The aim of this course is to:
- Analyse how social media contribute to the making of the contemporary digital, data-based economy
- Analyse how social media platforms engineer social participation • Critically assess the role which current computing and communication technologies play in transforming user platform participation into revenue generating services
- Analyse the types of services social media platforms develop for platform users and third parties
- Evaluate the role of technical design and information architecture in the making of the services produced by social media platforms
- Analyse the business models pioneered by social media and the ways these models change business practices
- Critically assess the relevance of customisation and personalisation as a service strategy in the digital economy
- Analyse the technical and organisational preconditions of the sharing economy and the ways this is likely to develop in the immediate future
We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.