Interpersonal Media (Fall 2015)

Interpersonal Media: Online Communities

COM482A - Department of Communication

Instructor: Benjamin Mako Hill (University of Washington)

Course Website: We will use Canvas for announcements, turning in assignments, and discussion. Everything else will be linked on this page.

Course Catalog Description:

Examines the relationships and groups formed through digital social media. Focuses on how people manage interactions and identities, develop interpersonal relationships, engage in collaboration and conflict, and develop communities in online environments. Involves both the study and use of network-based computer-mediated systems.

Overview and Learning Objectives

Digital social media has radically and rapidly transformed the nature of how we communicate and interact. When this class was first offered at UW many years ago, instructors might hope to introduce students to online communities and computer-mediated communication for the first time! Today, online communities are central parts of each of our daily lives and have an important impact on our cultural, social, and economic experience of the world and each other.

This course combines an in-depth look into several decades of research into online communities and computer-mediated communication with exercises that aim to give students experience applying this research to the evaluation of, and hands-on participation in, online communities.

As students of communication in the twenty-first century, I expect that many of you taking this course will, after graduation, work in jobs that involve communicating, working with, or managing online communities. This class seeks to inform these experiences by helping you learn how to use and contribute to online communities more effectively and how to construct, improve, or design your own online communities.

I will consider the course a complete success if every student is able to do all of these things at the end of the quarter:

• Recall, compare, and give examples of key theories that can explain why some online communities grow and attract participants while others do not.
• Demonstrate an ability to critically apply the theories from the course to the evaluation of a real online community of your choice.
• Engage with the course material and compellingly present your own ideas and reflections in writing and orally.
• Write and speak with a fluency about the rules and norms of the Wikipedia community and demonstrate this fluency through successful contributions to Wikipedia.