Social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, have become an omnipresent class of communication that is continuously transforming the ways we communicate in everyday life. This course applies theories of communication to analyze the design and effects of social media on individual, social, and political outcomes. In doing so, we will consider topics that include social networks and contagion, identity management, memes, and viral trends, opinion formation and reinforcement, algorithms and bots, privacy and surveillance, rumors and misinformation, and civic engagement and mobilization. At the end of the course, the students will gain the expertise, critical reasoning ability, and analytical skills to efficiently create, consume, and evaluate the cognitive and sociopolitical effects of social media.
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