Birmingham City University happy to debate social media degree
Fierce debate has broken out online about a new masters degree at a Birmingham university teaching students how to make the most of websites like Facebook and Twitter.
But academics at Birmingham City University, which is recruiting students for its newly-launched MA in Social Media for September, have welcomed the internet discussion as they say it is exactly the phenomenon the course was set up to study.
The MA, among the first in the country to focus entirely on social media, aims to equip media professionals with an understanding of how people communicate through websites, blogs and other interactive sites.
Websites such as Twitter – a “microblogging” service for people to communicate what they are doing or thinking through 140 character updates – have been filled with people commenting on the course following sceptical press reports.
Birmingham City University online journalism lecturer Paul Bradshaw, who will lecture on the MA course, said the debate was “fantastic” as social media was all about getting conversations going.
"It’s exactly what we want as part of an MA in Social Media," he said. "You want discussion, debate, conversation and hopefully enlightenment.”
But he hit back at accusations that the course was simply a “Masters in Facebook,” adding it was an updated version of a media studies course designed for the digital age.
“It’s about an academic exploration of communication. We are surrounded by all these websites and they are increasingly becoming a part of our commercial and business life,” he said. “We are trying to increase our understanding of these issues and their implications for people’s personal and business lives.”
