Miss Cristina Alaimo NAB3.04

This course is available on the IMEX Exchange, MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and USC), MSc in Management, MSc in Management (CEMS MIM), MSc in Management (MiM Exchange), MSc in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation, MSc in Media and Communications, MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society), MSc in Media and Communications (Media and Communications Governance) and MSc in Media and Communications (Research). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course is about social computing: the growing importance lay publics assume in spinning the fabric of the Web and the digital economy. Such a transformation toward a social Web is closely associated with the unprecedented diffusion and continuing development of light technologies such as smart phones, tablets, wearables and Web 2.0 applications. It is also linked to architectural innovations that help construct interoperable information systems, platforms and infrastructures. Taken together, these trends set the stage for the transition from a transaction-based Web to a Web in which social interaction becomes the backbone activity for the production of (social) data and the generation of value.

In this context, social media platforms emerge as key entities that mark the transformation toward a social Web. Social media are not just platforms facilitating social participation - they are becoming powerful actors disrupting entire business sectors. Social media platforms are central for the production of data-driven services that accommodate a great variety of stakeholders such as platform owners, platform users and third parties such as advertisers and digital analytic companies. Social media are in the business of data making. The course unravels the ways in which social media are engineering social interaction for the production of social data as the source of value generation. They produce value by encoding social interaction into data that aggregated enter in the economic circuits of digital services and Big data. The course analyses the ways in which social media platforms procure, standardize and organize data and information. It shows how social media deploys personalization strategies and how personalization is inherently connected to big data economy. The course takes a unique approach to social media by examining their data making operations and the innovative economic practices they promote. Social media powered networks, platforms, and infrastructures are at the basis of today’s most successful business stories.

The course blends theories, ongoing research insight and real life examples to understand the social and economic implications of these significant developments.

Learning outcomes

• Understand the drives behind social computing
• Assess the current dynamics of the Web
• Understand the technological developments and the architectural principles that govern social computing and the growing involvement of publics in the Web
• Link information architectures with social systems and the digital economy Understand information infrastructures and the role they play in the development of the Web and the digital economy
• Understand social media as important actors of the social data and big data economy
• Assess the role of digital platforms and infrastructures in the making of the social web
• Understand personalization strategies and their implications
• Acquire critical awareness of social data and big data

20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of seminars in the LT.

There is a Reading Week in Week 6. There will be no teaching during this week.

Classes are based around reading and discussing selected journal articles and case studies from the course reading list.

Written formative feedback is provided on the 500 words proposal for the summative essay.

• Alaimo, C. and Kallinikos, J. (forthcoming). “Encoding the everyday: Social Data and its Media Apparatus”, in Big Data is not a monolith: Policies, practices, and problems, Sugimoto, C, Ekbia, H. and Mattioli M. (eds.) Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press (forthcoming).
• Constantiou, I. and Kallinikos, J. (2015). New games, new rules: Big data and the changing context of strategy. Journal of Information Technology, 30 (1).
• Kitchin, R (2014). The data revolution: Big data, open data, data infrastructures and their consequences. London: Sage.
• van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Weinberger, D. (2007). Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. New York: Times Books.
• Yoo, Y., Henfridsson, O., & Lyytinen, K. (2010). Research commentary-The new organizing logic of digital innovation: An agenda for information systems research. Information Systems Research, 21(4), 724-735.
• Zittrain, J. (2008) The Future of the Internet. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Essay (100%, 5000 words) in the LT.