Watch and learn! Carefully selected media links will help bring key concepts and theories to life, preparing you for your studies and exams. 

Click on the following links which will open in a new window.

Audio Links

• On The Media: “Watching Each Other Watch” This segment discusses how fans use of social media like Twitter is transforming the TV-watching experience.

• On the Media: “Can a Small Search Engine Take on Google?” This piece examines a small search engine start up that is trying to compete with Google.

Video Links

• Danah Boyd: American Teens & Social Media: A visual representation of Danah Boyd's research on teenagers and their patterns of using social media.

• Frontline: Revolution in Cairo: Frontline covers the recent revolution in which social media is thought to have played a significant role.

• Frontline: Growing Up Online, Ch. 1: This episode is about the impact of the Internet on the current generation. It shows how the Internet is reforming key social institutions, but particularly the relationships of young adults.

• TED: James Surowiecki: When Social Media Became News James Surowiecki points to the 2005 tsunami, an event which he considers the moment when social media became a critical, legitimate tool in gathering and disseminating news. He argues that social media can provide both great benefits and drawbacks in the process of sharing and understanding information.

• News War: Info Snacking and A New Universe of Online Media: This segment examines how “old” news media is scrambling to keep up with audience expectations in a new media era.

• TED Talks: Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy: Stefana Broadbent discusses her research which shows how communication technology is capable of bringing us closer together, despite common fears that technology is isolating.

• TED Talks: Andrew Fitzgerald: Adventures in Twitter fiction The speaker explores how technology and creativity combine in new ways, through the example of story-telling on Twitter.

Web Resources

• Prometheus Radio Project. Media policy and activist organizations advocating for low power radio (LPFM).

• DML Central. The Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the University of California.

• Pew Internet & American Life Project.Provides data on technology use in the U.S.

• Technosociology. The blog of Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist who studies interactions between technology and society.

• Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Harvard research center which studies the development of cyberspace, with a focus on law.

• Wikipedia. The web-based collaboratively-written encyclopedia.

• MIT Media Lab. Broad range of human-machine research, focusing on the creative use of digital technologies to enhance lives.