A minor-storm erupted last week regarding the launch of the MA in Social Media by Birmingham City University.
Described inaccurately by the Daily Mail as
a "Masters degree in Facebook" this was a cue for references to
"Mickey Mouse degrees", "ex-Poly students" and "tax payers money +
drains" etc etc......[Feel free to complete].
My favourite comment on the Daily Mail site was from "Paul", who (apparently) lives in Los Angeles. So incensed by the launch of an MA (not even from a university in his own country), that "Paul" forgot how to spell...
"What unbelievable bovine,equine and Yak excremnet! i guess this proves
people can get more stupid than they are mow."- Paul, Los Angeles USA, 29/3/2009 22:31
"Paul from Los Angeles" is clearly an idiot (where are those moderators when you need them?). And whilst the Daily Mail's reporting could easily be dismissed as "lazy journalism", sadly, it reflects a wider misunderstanding of the role of higher education in the mainstream media which dates back to the 70s when universities were attacked for teaching sociology.
The reality is that an MA in Social Media is relevant to anyone who communicates with audiences online or needs an understanding of the importance of online communities. So that could include people who work in the: computer games industry, PR, marketing and just about any business with a website.
I'm no expert, but there has been a lot of interesting academic material on the rise of online communities, crowd-sourcing and the formation of social relationships coming out of the US and Australia in the past year. It is early days, but this is a subject that has a proper academic underpinning.
Whilst the volume of academic material and research is astonishing, one of the most common errors that students tend to make when discussing the Internet is to assume its impact is the same in all countries. In reality, whilst the Internet is (obviously) global in nature, its impact is not homogeneous. That's to say, for example, a young person in the UK does not always have the same experience of Internet communities as someone in the US, Singapore, Germany or perhaps China. We interpret online actions differently.
Some more comments from Daily Mail contributors...
.
In short, we desperately need a UK (or perhaps European) perspective on things. This is where the academics at Birmingham City University are leading the way.
I teach on a journalism degree course and often have friends in the industry ask me whether there is "enough" to say about journalism to fill a three year course.
The reality is that we're not short of things to teach. We obviously teach the basic writing skills, as we have always done. But there is also more technology to understand, ethics, law and business skills to learn. This is a sector that is changing beyond all recognition and we need to equip our students to understand this.
The same will be true for an MA in Social Media which lasts just one year. There will be a lot of academic theory to assimilate, as well as the practical development of new and, hopefully, groundbreaking online applications.I would be really excited to be a student on such a course.
I do have some criticisms. Birmingham City University says that the course comes from the angle of cultural
studies, but I doubt if this will be enough. Running courses
cross-faculty is always very difficult, but from my experience students want to know how things work from a technical stance. It can be tricky to decide where the cut-off point is, but it would be wise to make links with the computing department (as
they have done on the excellent MA in Electronic Publishin at City University in
London, which is run by two faculties).
But social media is a) important to the UK economy and b) something worthy of academic study. So let's drop references to "Yak excremnet" (whatever that is?) and the rather tiresome discussion of "Mickey Mouse degrees" (much loved by tabloid journalists) and lets have a serious debate about the impact of social media.
