Overview

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Online communication and digital technologies dominate our everyday lives, extend our abilities, and change the way we communicate with each other. This series brings together three Internet Studies MOOCS:

NET1x will increase learners’ understandings of social media by looking at the ways networked connectivity let users become 'social'
NET2x further explores the way digital technologies and social media channels impact our daily routines and transform how we live, using people with disability as a case study. Learners will be introduced to the social model of disability and the ways negative attitudes affect digital accessibility and representation.
Continuing the theme of human reliance on technologies, NET3x explores how people communicate with robots and bots in everyday life, both now and into the future.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Social Media: How Media Got Social

Discover where social media came from, how it became integral to our everyday lives, and how that has changed the way we communicate.

Course 2: Disability and Digital Media: Accessibility, Representation and Inclusion

In Disability and Digital Media: Accessibility, Representation and Inclusion , we will explore the relationship between digital technologies and disability in the Internet age.

Course 3: Communicating with Robots and Bots

Robots and bots are being developed to populate our homes, workplaces and social spaces, as well as the online spaces we frequent. How do people communicate with robots and bots? What does the future hold for human-robot communication and collaboration

Courses

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4 weeks, 2-3 hours a week, 2-3 hours a week
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Social media and online communication dominate our daily lives in an unprecedented manner. Wireless connectivity, mobile devices and wearable technologies mean that social media is always on, always part of everyday life for billions of people across the world.

While the term 'social media' is barely a decade old, the story of how people started using the internet in a social manner is a much longer and more interesting one. This course willincrease learners' understanding of social media by looking at the ways networked connectivity let users become 'social', how this was amplified with the emergence of the web, and how social media became the default mode of the mobile web we use today.
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4 weeks, 3-4 hours a week, 3-4 hours a week
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In Disability and Digital Media , we will explore the relationship between digital technologies and disability in the Internet age.We will consider:
- the evolving impact of social media on representations of disability;
- the politics of experiencing, embodying, and discussing disability online;
- the presence of disability in memes, viral content, and online culture; and
- the role of accessibility in the digital world.
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4 weeks, 2-3 hours a week, 2-3 hours a week
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Although there are some robots you might never get to meet (or might hope you never meet), such as those sent to space, war or rescue situations, many other robots and bots are being developed to populate people's homes, the online spaces they frequent, their workplaces, and the social spaces they visit.

This course explores how people communicate with robots and bots in everyday life, both now and into the future.

Module 1 discusses the difficulties of defining what a robot is, as well as briefly introducing bots.

Module 2 focuses on bots, chatbots and socialbots in detail, to consider how people communicate with these programs in online spaces, as well as some ethical questions these interactions raise.

Robots in the home are the subject of Module 3, with a discussion of robots designed to act as personal assistants leading into some examples of assistive and care robots, as well as telepresence robots that allow people to interact with one another at a distance through a robot.

Module 4 considers robots at work, from the potential of telepresence robots to enable remote operations, to robots designed to share people's workspaces, and potentially even take their jobs. One example of a public space where robots might alter people's working and social lives greatly is on the roads with the development of self-driving vehicles, robots that need to be able to communicate with their passengers as well as with other road users.