COMM 1420U – Living Digitally: Social Media, Culture & Society

What does it mean to ‘live digitally’ and why shouldn’t we just accept the digital world as it’s presented to us by the big social media players? The integration of social media with society has transformed the communication and media environment, and reconfigured economies, politics, and cultures, even our sense of ourselves. This course gives students an honest and sometimes startling look under the hood of some of today’s most popular Internet and social media platforms, products, markets, and services, moving beyond the buzz to examine how history, social power relations, economics, politics and policy, identity, and ethics are actively colliding to shape the digital world as we experience it today. It considers the drivers, roles and impacts of social media on societies, past, present and future. Students learn to think critically about social media in contemporary society and culture, and examine how it intersects with and impacts their own lives.