| CODE | YTH5039 | |||||||||
| TITLE | The Digital Dimension of Community Action and Development | |||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | |||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | |||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | |||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Youth, Community and Migration Studies | |||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | The study-unit provides a platform for critical engagement with ICT knowledge and skills relevant to community workers' day-to-day professional practice and foundational to their long-term professional development. This study-unit also introduces participaents to academic literature about the effects of social media and the online world on communities and society at large, allowing participants to reflect on the role of ICT in the communities they engage with. Study-Unit Aims: This study-unit targets students' acquisition of and critical engagement with updated ICT knowledge and skills relevant to community workers' day-to-day professional practice and foundational to their long-term professional development. It also targets sensitizing students to effects of social media and broader ICT on the communities the they engage with. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Critically discuss theoretical concepts of communities of practice, affinity spaces, participatory cultures,remixing and media convergence; - Identify basic online tools for carrying out research in community settings; - List strengths and weaknesses of given online tools for carrying out research in community settings; - Discuss the role of social media in community work; - Define the characteristics of online ethnography; - Discuss possibilities of online resourcing for a given community project (with special focus on online media campaigns/dissemination and online analytics). 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Use Web 2.0 tools to conduct research in online communities; - Design and implement online ethnography projects; - Create online data collection forms. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Gee, J.P. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces. Beyond communities of practice language power and social context (pp. 214-232). Retrieved from http://www.bendevane.com/RDC2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Gee-Social-Semiotic-Spaces.pdf - Grazian, D. (2005). A Digital Revolution? A Reassessment of New Media and Cultural Production in the Digital Age. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 597, 209-222. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ejournals.um.edu.mt/stable/25046070 - Jenkins, H.; lto, M. & Boyd, D. (2016). Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. - Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. NYU press. Supplementary Readings: - Castells, M. (2012). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. - Castells, M. (1999). Flows, Networks, and Identities: A Critical Theory of the Informational Society. In Castells, M, Flecha, R., Freire, P., Giroux, H.A., Macedo, D. & Willis, P. Critical Education in the New Information Age (pp. 37 - 64). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. Maryland. - McLoughlin, I. & Wilson, R. (2013). Digital Government at Work: A Social Informatics Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Kass-Hout, T.A. & Alhinnawi, H. (2013). Social media in public health. British Medical Bulletin, 108, 5–24. doi:10.1093/bmb/ldt028. - Kozinets, R. (2010). Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. London: Sage. - Peppler, K.A. & Solomou, M. (2011). Building creativity: collaborative learning and creativity in social media environments. On the Horizon, 19(1), 13 - 23, doi.org/10.1108/10748121111107672. - Salmons, J. (2016). Doing Qualitative Research Online. London: Sage. - Sitter, K. C. & Curnew, A.H. (2016). The application of social media in social work community practice. Social Work Education, 35(3), 271-283, doi:10.1080/02615479.2015.1131257. - Youmans, W. L., & York, J. C. (2012). Social Media and the Activist Toolkit: User Agreements, Corporate Interests, and the Information Infrastructure of Modern Social Movements. Journal Of Communication, 62(2), 315-329. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01636.x. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | |||||||||
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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