Social Media Literacy (L5)

Lesson 1 - The historical development of social media

Lesson 2 - Types of social media such as social networks, blogs, wikis, virtual worlds and games

Lesson 3 - The personal and community uses of social media

Lesson 4 - Your rights and responsibilities

Lesson 5- How to improve your social media presence

Lesson 6 - What’s meant by ‘social intelligence’, ‘social production’ and ‘social capital’

Lesson 7 - When to use (and not use) social media

Lesson 8 - The dangers of social media and how to protect yourself

Lesson 9 - The emerging social economy

Lesson 10 - Dos and don’ts of using social media

Lesson 11 - Using social media for learning

Lesson 12 - How social media makes money

Lesson 13 - The implications of social media for society

This section will help you decide whether this is the Unit for you by explaining what the Unit is about, what you should know or be able to do before you start, what you will need to do during the Unit and opportunities for further learning and employment.

This Unit aims to improve your knowledge of, and skills with, social media. It will also help you to appreciate the importance of social media in the modern world.

This Unit is about using and understanding social media such as Facebook™ and Twitter™. While most people use social media to some extent, the background to social media (what it is, how it came about, etc) is little known. Also, the implications of the use of social media are not well understood. These implications can affect your employment or relationships. There are some extravagant claims made for the influence of social media (such as Twitter-inspired revolutions) and this Unit seeks to put those claims into perspective.

It also shows how social media can be used for a variety of purposes, beyond simple status updates, including the educational potential of the medium.

The social media studied includes a wide range of modern media including, but not limited to, social networks (such as Facebook™), blogs (such as Twitter™), VOIP (such as Skype™), and virtual worlds (such as Second Life™).

The Unit involves a ‘social production’ that involves you, in collaboration with others, in producing new knowledge using social media. This will take the form of an investigation into a social media development. Your findings will be presented using social media, such as a blog or a wiki.

The key goal of this Unit is to teach you to be a knowledgeable, responsible and active user of social media so that you can confidently use it for personal or educational purposes.

This Unit is part of a series of Units on social media. You may progress to the next Unit in the series (Social Media Literacy at SCQF level 6) on completion of this Unit if you wish to improve your knowledge and skills in this area.