In the introductory module, we will examine the concepts of being social, of self-representation, online identity and publishing. We will also look at how the social media technologies intersect with public and private spheres as networked communication develops.

We examine who the users of social media are, how they use it and their motivations. We will also look at the difference between networks and communities. Through the lens of 'produsage' we will explore participatory culture and understand the motivations behind users contributing to cultural production.

Organisations are often accused of exploiting their users and online community members when they participate in collaborative cultural production activities. Similarly, participants are also accused of ignoring reciprocal efforts in collective online arrangements for personal gain, or what has recently been described as 'hope labour' (Kuehn & Corrigan, 2013). In this module, we will explore the tensions that surround precarious labour models for the productuon and consumption of social media content. In particular we will look at the concepts of cultural production, institutions, cultural intermediation, creativity and art.

Communication across social media platforms produces an enormous amount of data that can describe content, location, users, purchases, events and emotions, along with larger scale areas such as reactions to news and politics, integration with sporting events or information and knowledge exchange, Each of these instances provides an opportunity to understand both general patterns of large-scale communication alog with nuanced individual and niche communication spaces. This module provides the opportunity to identify this sort of data, how to access and collect it and interpret and display it to strategically target larger users and networks.