杏吧论坛

Prof Jannis Kallinikos and Dr Zhi Cheng

Dr Cheng is known as 'Aaron'.

This course is available on the CEMS Exchange, Global MSc in Management, Global MSc in Management (CEMS MiM), Global MSc in Management (MBA Exchange), MBA Exchange, MSc in Management (1 Year Programme), MSc in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation and MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course is about the growing importance ordinary users assume in spinning the fabric of the Web and supporting the operations of social media platforms and networks. This social transformation of the Web that is often referred to as social computing is closely associated with the diffusion of potent lightweight technologies such as smartphones, tablet computers and wearables and the continuing development of advanced interactive software applications. It is also linked to architectural and other software-based innovations that help construct interoperable information systems and infrastructures. Taken together, these trends set the stage for the transition from a transaction-based Web (e.g. buying items) to a Web in which online interaction, talk and communication become the backbone activities for the production of data that are variously used by social media platforms to generate economic value.



In this context, social media platforms emerge as key entities that mark the social transformation of the Web and the production of services that accommodate a great deal of stakeholders, such as platform owners, platform users and third parties such as advertisers and digital analytics companies. The course deals with the ways by which social media platforms operate as business organisations by analysing how they engineer user participation to produce a computable data footprint that is subsequently used to develop a range of data-based resources and services. The course also deals with the state-of-the-art data analytics techniques and methods used by social media and digital platforms to deploy personalisation strategies as a means of boosting user platform engagement and generating data. It covers the current and emerging approaches in data extraction, aggregation, predictive computing, personalisation and recommender systems, which shape the future of digital business strategy that builds on big data, machine intelligence and analytical thinking.



Overall, the course takes a unique approach to social media by examining the data-work they perform — encoding, aggregating, and computing — from both the organisational, managerial and technical perspectives.

The course blends theories, ongoing research insights, data analytics concepts, techniques and real-life examples to analyse the social and economic implications of these significant developments.

• Explain the drives behind social computing

• Describe the technological developments and the architectural principles that govern social computing and the growing involvement of lay publics in the Web

• Link data-based practices with social systems and the digital economy

• Explain how social media platforms operate as business organisations

• Understand the formation of ecosystems and the role they play in sustaining the operations of social media platforms and the digital economy

• Describe social media as important actors in the digital economy

• Develop data-ana