In this module, students will critically explore technology as a way for people to observe and interact with others, in particular social media and purpose-built online forums. We will focus on understanding who uses social media to consume and communicate material as well as what topics are discussed how and for what purposes. Throughout, we will discuss the implications for designing new technologies.

As part of this module, we will review core skills for conducting and documenting a study that are vital for successful completion of a Masters thesis. Skills include how to review the literature, how to read a paper in human-computer interaction, how to formulate a research question, how to design a qualitative study, and how to conduct and present qualitative data analysis. In the first part, we will work on lecturer provided data sets, in the second part, students are expected to curate their own.