From conspiratorial rabbit holes to makeup tutorials, Americans are trapped within algorithms and a constant influx of information. College aged students have found themselves at the genesis of the social media age, and while it affects everyone, it can be overwhelming to face political and social issues online. Professor Poncin Reeves wants to equip students to engage in thoughtful dialogue around meaningful and sometimes controversial topics. WRD 390: Persuasion in the Age of TikTok will address how “democracy encounters the information deluge of social media.”
Crosslisted as LSP 275: Lived Civics, The Social Contract and Public Life, this course will synthesize meaning found within social contract theory, and what that looks like within the context of online discourse communities. Poncin Reeves claims, “We have to live in a society and have order to live in a coherent society. To do that, we have to give stuff up to each other or our government.” It is important to note that societial negotiations are constantly under way in terms of how we approach social media. Poncin Reeves recognizes this and notes how the course has evolved since the last time she taught the course only a couple of years ago.
“Social Media is constantly changing. There will be updates for new trends surrounding social media content. As a political class it will also be updated for the current political environment. There was a minute where we thought “Is TikTok gonna go away from the US?” Fortunately, or I don’t know if it’s fortunate, TikTok still exists.”
The course will culminate with students creating their own piece of social media persuasion based on theories and techniques learned in the course. Students will also get the opportunity to write reflections on their experiences of social media by synthesizing social contract theory with what they are seeing online. The perspective of all students is extremely valuable and will contribute to the overall success of the course.
“I will be interested to see what these students bring. We are all in different spaces on social media. I see different things and language trending, so that is really useful to have their perspective. It is about how you are existing online, and exploring how social media pushes us to communicate in a particular sort of way.”
This important course can help students bridge the divide created by division on social media while also learning how to promote the change they want to see in the world.
“We live in a democracy. If we want to create change, we have to think about how to bring people on board to the things that we care about. Social media is a huge avenue of how to do that. We are seeing so much division in our society. A lot of that is being driven by how we consume information on social media, and connecting with lived experience will be a way to learn how to address this in our own lives.”
This course fulfills a Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Domain Credit, making it valuable to WRD and non-WRD students alike. If you are interested in WRD 309, course carts are open! To explore other WRD courses being offered in the Spring, visit our Course Spotlights page.