LIN 280 - Language in Social Media

Social media came into being along with the internet in the 1990s, and have rapidly become an ubiquitous form of communication and information. This course provides an exploration of how language is used in social media, and how language in social media can be analyzed. We start out by understanding how humans form social networks and what the properties of these networks are. We then compare how the emergence of social media has changed the manner in which we humans communicate, and investigate possible positive and negative effects of this change. One of the major effects is that many more people are ‘publishing’ today, and we will discover how this has affected public language use. We also discuss the technology behind social media, and learn about the dangers in social media. We also discuss the technologies used in social media, and learn about the potential and the dangers that lie in these technologies.

3 credits

SBC: STAS