Students

MMCC3046 – Social Media

2023 – Session 1, In person-scheduled-weekday, North Ryde

General Information

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Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit Convener
Terri Senft
Contact via Please email
10 Hadenfeld Ave Room 147
Office hours held via Zoom. For more details, please see iLearn.
Credit points Credit points
10
Prerequisites Prerequisites
130cp at 1000 level or above
Corequisites Corequisites
Co-badged status Co-badged status
Unit description Unit description

This unit will offer students an understanding of the key role social media now plays in media practice and culture. The ways in which social media impact and influence public debate will be explored. The unit will involve students in integrating existing and emerging online platforms and technologies into media practice. Students will analyse the way media organisations, corporations and individuals utilise social media to produce narratives and participate in public discourse. They will also examine the way social and online media have opened up new possibilities for building audiences and communities using a wide variety of social media platform and practices.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  • ULO1: synthesize a range of theories related to digital media, visual studies and social media studies.
  • ULO3: evaluate the ontological, epistemological and ethical differences between how networked computers, humans, and institutions experience perception, knowledge and action.
  • ULO2: apply disciplinary theories to evaluate the various uses of visual framing and networked images in social media.
  • ULO4: deploy the walk-through method to illustrate and unpack the visible and invisible governing structures of a social media platform, application, or practice.
  • ULO5: analyse and apply the theme, question, object, lens, method, presentation approach to assessing case studies in global social media culture.

General Assessment Information

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of ‘0’ (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.55pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue. This late penalty will apply to written reports and recordings only. Late submission of time sensitive tasks (such as tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, scheduled practical assessments/labs will be addressed by the unit convenor in a Special consideration application.

Assessment Tasks

Name Weighting Hurdle Due
Platform Walkthrough 50% No Friday 04/07/23 by 11:55 pm (23:55)
Comparative Case Analysis 50% No Friday 06/02/23 by 11:55 pm (23:55)

Platform Walkthrough

Assessment Type 1: Project
Indicative Time on Task 2: 49 hours
Due: Friday 04/07/23 by 11:55 pm (23:55)
Weighting: 50%

For this exercise, students are required to consider the question, “How do social media platforms deploy visuality to signal their ideological biases to users?” For this exercise, you should focus on ONE social media platform of your choosing, and ONE ideological bias of interest (e.g. safety, usefulness, popularity, friendship, a ‘good’ experience, etc. As we discussed in class, platform visuality involves what (or whom) seem to receive visual emphasis, as well as what (or whom) seems hidden, obscured, or overlooked.

Refer to iLearn for further information.


On successful completion you will be able to:
  • synthesize a range of theories related to digital media, visual studies and social media studies.
  • evaluate the ontological, epistemological and ethical differences between how networked computers, humans, and institutions experience perception, knowledge and action.
  • apply disciplinary theories to evaluate the various uses of visual framing and networked images in social media.
  • deploy the walk-through method to illustrate and unpack the visible and invisible governing structures of a social media platform, application, or practice.
  • analyse and apply the theme, question, object, lens, method, presentation approach to assessing case studies in global social media culture.

Comparative Case Analysis

Assessment Type 1: Qualitative analysis task
Indicative Time on Task 2: 49 hours
Due: Friday 06/02/23 by 11:55 pm (23:55)
Weighting: 50%

This assessment has been designed to test the “theme, question, lens, method, presentation” approach to social media studies. Using a traditional or creative format, students will be asked to compare two social media related events, phenomena, news developments, or user experiences.

Refer to iLearn for further information.


On successful completion you will be able to:
  • synthesize a range of theories related to digital media, visual studies and social media studies.
  • evaluate the ontological, epistemological and ethical differences between how networked computers, humans, and institutions experience perception, knowledge and action.
  • apply disciplinary theories to evaluate the various uses of visual framing and networked images in social media.
  • deploy the walk-through method to illustrate and unpack the visible and invisible governing structures of a social media platform, application, or practice.
  • analyse and apply the theme, question, object, lens, method, presentation approach to assessing case studies in global social media culture.

1 If you need help with your assignment, please contact:

  • the academic teaching staff in your unit for guidance in understanding or completing this type of assessment
  • the Writing Centre for academic skills support.

2 Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation

Delivery and Resources

CLASS DESCRIPTION: SEEING SOCIAL MEDIA

 

This is a class devoted to social media culture: the personal, social, political and economic ramifications of living in a time dominated by social media. As you might expect from our class title, we will spend a substantial amount of time thinking about life online in terms of networked images.

This can put us in contentious territory. If it is true that the internet is a trash fire, networked images provide a fair amount of its garbage, and most of its gasoline. Be they 'stupid' reaction GIFs, 'narcissistic' selfies, 'confusing' memes, 'serious' displays of evidence (as in photographed protests) or 'horrifying' displays of depravity (as in live-streamed executions), networked images tend to figure heavily into debates about what social media 'has done' to notions of identity, community, creativity, privacy, news, ethics, and pleasure around the world.

In this class, we will consider some of these debates, but we will also consider how the hyper-visibility of digital images contrasts with the opaqueness and transparency of platforms, apps, and technologies. This matters, because at the platform level, social media includes nearly every site or app we access each day. Everyone knows social networking services like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat "count" as social media. But we should also be thinking in terms of knowledge-building platforms like Wikipedia, shopping platforms like Amazon, travel platforms like TripAdvisor, streaming platforms like Spotify, Netflix , and Twitch, fitness platforms like FitBit, plagiarism detection platforms like TurnitIn, gaming platforms like XBox Live, baby monitoring platforms....the list goes on.

We should also be aware that even platforms that aren't explicitly social can be driven by technologies that create socially networked effects. We've probably all heard of algorithmic manipulation on social networking sites like Facebook with "personally designed news feeds," but the most notorious company deploying algorithmic "recipes" to sort, rank and target its users is actually Google. Companies like Uber that gather our geographical data are also key players in the tracing and tracking game. Even if you never go online at all, your phone is already designed to work like a drone, collecting and reporting your movement patterns back to the companies that built them (and sometimes to the governments where they are located.)

The class will take up these issues, framing them in terms of what can be seen, known, enforced, and resisted in social media culture. Throughout, we'll continue to return to the question: What are the best ways to learn, advocate, create, love and protect ourselves in social media culture, when both visibility and invisibility offer promise and threat?

LECTURE, TUTORIAL, OFFICE MEETING FORMATS  

  • ALL LECTURES WILL BE DELIVERED VIA PRE-RECORDED VIDEO (ACCESSIBLE ON ECHO360)
  • TUTORIALS WILL BE DELIVERED EITHER ON CAMPUS, OR VIA ZOOM (DEPENDING ON WHICH SECTION STUDENT REGISTERED) 
  • OFFICE HOURS WILL BE DELIVERED VIA ZOOM, ONCE WEEKLY, AND ARE RUN IN A GROUP SETTING.

 

Unit Schedule

FIRST CLASSES 

  • FIRST MANDATORY LECTURE:  WEEK 1 (Students will watch MANDATORY assigned videos on their own) 
  • FIRST IN-CLASS TUTORIAL : WEEK 2 (Students will attend on campus, or over Zoom, per their registration details.) 

 

FULL SCHEDULE OF PLANNED UNIT CONTENT, BY WEEK 

 

Full Schedule of lectures, tutorials and assessments can be seen here:

 

https://z9bcp7k.sharing.bublup.com/ui/landing_page?item_id=001-i-49ba3caa-0c1f-4d13-a51c-3e29c250f3ea​​​​​​​  

POLICY RE ATTENDANCE 

Your attendance at tutorials is EXPECTED, but NOT GRADED. Additional IMPORTANT NOTE: If you miss a tutorial: Instructors cannot "catch you up" for this unit--you must do that on your own! To do that: watch that week's tutorial video (will be posted each week to Echo360) and complete that week's tutorial worksheet (also available on Echo 360) to stay current with the unit. Please bring your questions to your next tutorial session, or if you need faster answers, attend Terri's weekly Zoom office hour sessions.   

 

POLICY RE PRIVATE MEETINGS  

 This class is exceptionally large for a Level 3 unit, and the only personal meetings we can have with students are those relating to personal issues: illness, disability accomodations, domestic hardship issues, foreign student difficulty accessing materials, etc. Students desiring to "have a quick personal chat" about their assessment ideas will be directed to raise their issues during tutorial time (that is why it exists) or to bring them to Terri's group office hour session.  Please note that office hours for this unit are held once weekly in group format over Zoom,  where we will work on issues as a cohort. This is because there really are no assessment-related questions that so unique and personal that the everyone wouldn't benefit from working through them as a group. 

Policies and Procedures

Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au). Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:

Students seeking more policy resources can visit Student Policies (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/policies). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.

To find other policies relating to Teaching and Learning, visit Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au) and use the search tool.

Student Code of Conduct

Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/admin/other-resources/student-conduct

Results

Results published on platform other than eStudent, (eg. iLearn, Coursera etc.) or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit ask.mq.edu.au or if you are a Global MBA student contact globalmba.support@mq.edu.au

Academic Integrity

At Macquarie, we believe academic integrity – honesty, respect, trust, responsibility, fairness and courage – is at the core of learning, teaching and research. We recognise that meeting the expectations required to complete your assessments can be challenging. So, we offer you a range of resources and services to help you reach your potential, including free online writing and maths support, academic skills development and wellbeing consultations.

Student Support

Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/

The Writing Centre

The Writing Centre provides resources to develop your English language proficiency, academic writing, and communication skills.

The Library provides online and face to face support to help you find and use relevant information resources. 

Student Services and Support

Macquarie University offers a range of Student Support Services including:

Student Enquiries

Got a question? Ask us via AskMQ, or contact Service Connect.

IT Help

For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/information_technology/help/

When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.


Unit information based on version 2023.01R of the Handbook