Universität Wien

400019 SE Social Media Activism: Theory, Methods and Practice (2023S)

Theory seminar

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 40 - Doktoratsstudium Sozialwissenschaften
Continuous assessment of course work

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 15 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

The course starts at 4pm
The course on the 5th of April starts at 2pm

  • Friday 03.03. 15:00 - 19:15 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Friday 17.03. 15:00 - 19:30 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Friday 31.03. 15:00 - 19:30 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Wednesday 05.04. 13:15 - 17:00 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Friday 21.04. 15:00 - 19:30 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Monday 24.04. 15:00 - 19:30 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Friday 05.05. 15:00 - 19:30 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Friday 26.05. 15:00 - 19:30 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Friday 16.06. 15:00 - 19:30 Seminarraum 11 Vernetzungsraum für Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

This course focuses on the theory, practices, and methods of social media activism. Social media nowadays become spaces of storytelling and political activism. In the first section of the course, the theoretical aspects of social media activism will be discussed. We will discuss theoretical concepts like networked publics, networked framing, connective action, and hashtag activism. In addition, we will discuss the oppressive tactics to suppress social media activism (SMA), like computational propaganda, disinformation, and online incivility.
In the next section, we focus on the methods of studying social media activism. The concentration of this section will be on digital methods providing a basic understanding of the nature of social media data and how we can combine textual interpretations (e.g., discourse analysis) with computational techniques (such as social network analysis and automated text analysis) to investigate SMA. Relevant literature and examples for each topic will be provided and discussed during the semester.
This seminar provides interested students with state-of-the-art literature in several areas, such as digital democracy, social media studies, and mixed methods.

Assessment and permitted materials

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

1. Regular attendance (up to 1 session may be missed)
2. Active and critical engagement with the assigned readings and
participation in the seminar discussions;
3. Presentation of a reading (the presentation will last for 10
minutes during which the student will introduce the selected
reading’s author as well as her methods, theories and
arguments),
and preparation of a set of questions emerging from the
presentation and chairing of the discussion;
4. Submission of a final essay (3500-6000 words, to be submitted 2 weeks after the last session)

Examination topics

Reading list

 
Albalawi, R., Yeap, T. H., & Benyoucef, M. (2020). Using Topic Modeling Methods for Short-Text Data: A Comparative Analysis. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frai.2020.00042
Barberá, P., Boydstun, A. E., Linn, S., McMahon, R., & Nagler, J. (2021). Automated Text Classification of News Articles: A Practical Guide. Political Analysis, 29(1), 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.8
Barbera, P., & Steinert-Threlkeld, Z. C. (2020). How to Use Social Media Data for Political Science Research. In L. Curini & R. Franzese (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations (pp. 404–423). Sage.
Bayer, J. B., Triệu, P., & Ellison, N. B. (2020). Social Media Elements, Ecologies, and Effects. Annual Review of Psychology, 71(1), 471–497. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010419-050944
Baym, N. K., & Boyd, D. (2012). Socially Mediated Publicness: An Introduction. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(3), 320–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2012.705200
Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661
boyd, danah, & Crawford, K. (2012). CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662–679. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878
boyd, D. (2010). Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), Networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 39–58). Routledge.
boyd, danah m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x
Brooker, P., Barnett, J., & Cribbin, T. (2016). Doing social media analytics. Big Data & Society, 3(2), 205395171665806. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716658060
Bruns, A., & Highfield, T. (2012). Blogs, Twitter, and breaking news: The produsage of citizen journalism. Produsing Theory in a Digital World : The Intersection of Audiences and Production in Contemporary Theory, 30, 15–32.
Bruns, A., & Highfield, T. (2015). Is Habermas on Twitter? Social Media and the Public Sphere. In The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (Issue July, pp. 56–73). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315716299
Bruns, A., Moon, B., Paul, A., & Münch, F. (2016). Towards a typology of hashtag publics: A large-scale comparative study of user engagement across trending topics. Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 20–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2016.1155328
Carr, C. T., & Hayes, R. A. (2015). Social Media: Defining, Developing, and Divining. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23(1), 46–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2015.972282
Chadwick, A., Dennis, J., & Smith, A. P. (2016). Politics in the age of hybrid media: Power, systems, and media logics. In A. Bruns, G. Enli, E. Skogerbø, A. O. Larsson, & C. Christensen (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (pp. 7–22). Routledge.
Chadwick, A., & Stanyer, J. (2022). Deception as a Bridging Concept in the Study of Disinformation, Misinformation, and Misperceptions: Toward a Holistic Framework. Communication Theory, 32(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtab019
Clark, R. (2016). “Hope in a hashtag”: The discursive activism of #WhyIStayed. Feminist Media Studies, 16(5), 788–804. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1138235
De Grove, F., Boghe, K., & De Marez, L. (2020). (What) Can Journalism Studies Learn from Supervised Machine Learning? Journalism Studies, 21(7), 912–927. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1743737
Dijck, J. V., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. https://doi.org/10.12924/mac2013.01010002
Driscoll, K., & Walker, S. (2014). Big Data, Big Questions| Working Within a Black Box: Transparency in the Collection an

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Th 30.03.2023 08:09