Social Media and Change (MECM90019)

This subject, is a select entry subject to be co-taught by staff at the University of Melbourne and Fudan University, will critically engage with the role of emergent social media platforms in contemporary forms of public communication, with a particular focus on their impacts on and challenges for journalism and political communication. To this end, the subject will engage with debates surrounding the social and public impact of technological transformations, and how these can be understood; the challenges and opportunities presented by changing media forms and platforms for media industries, media professionals and frameworks of media regulation; the degree to which the affordances of digital media may work to challenge and/or extend existing social relations; and, finally, how social media serve to contribute to shifting spaces and practices of public communication, and contemporary debates surrounding the significance of this. In doing so, this subject will consider the relationship between processes of media transformation and their relation to broader processes of global social change, focusing in particular on how these have impacted on China and Australia respectively.