PSY 2430 - DIGITAL ACTIVISM
credits: 3.0
Framework would use major theories of Social Psychology, including those focused on communication and social dilemmas, to analyze the current media landscape online. Students would discuss why social media are set up the way they are, from the broad (financial incentives for quantity over quality of content) to the highly specific (context collapse and argument cycles). Major topics would include the following: Moral Outrage in the Digital Age, Digital Pollution, privacy and identity, misinformation, epistemology and truth spirals, the Paradox of Tolerance, Anderson’s Law, glass slippers, the attention economy, and assessment metrics.
This class would cover issues of equity, justice, and privacy through a lens of examining contemporary uses of Big Data and statistical methods by businesses, governments, and other systems. We live in an era when moneyballification (the use of formal statistical analyses in processes that were previously casual human relationships) has affected everything from education and hiring to policing and health care. Understanding the statistics that underpin our systems, and the ways in which they are abused by bad actors, is increasingly important for navigating U.S. society. Objectives: A) Analyze the ethical implications of data-driven decision-making, especially in high-stakes settings; B) Explain and prevent context collapse around online discussions; C) Write blog posts, tweets, and other short-form communications that recognize the limits of mediated communication; D) Skeptically examine published uses of statistics in mass media; E) Critique agenda-driven and politically-motivated selection of statistical figures; F) Explain how we arrived at our current big-data-driven set of societal systems. Method of Instruction: Will involve a mixture of standard instruction, reading discussions, media presentations, guest speakers, and local immersive experiences. Students will complete writing activities and short video presentation activities online. Method of Evaluation: Attendance and Participation: 20%, Assignments: 30%, Weekly Posts: 30%, and Final Project: 20%.
Prerequisite(s): Required: Introductory Psychology OR Introductory Sociology. Recommended: Psychological Statistics OR Statistics for Business and Econ OR Statistical Methods OR Biostatistics.
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