SEM - Social Emerging Media

This course teaches the fundamentals of good storytelling while introducing techniques for engaging audiences across a variety of media forms. Students will explore how sound, images, interactivity, immersive video, virtual reality, and other emerging technologies are transforming storytelling practices in journalism, content writing, popular entertainment, and the arts. By the end of the course, students will demonstrate what they have learned by creating their own digital storytelling projects.

In this studio-based course, students will learn how to integrate diverse practices of art and design as they pertain to web-based, social media, and emerging visual communication. Students will gain necessary skills to unify visual concepts through an engagement with aesthetics, lighting, platform modification, and video presentation methods. This course will also give specific technical information regarding the use of the Adobe Creative Suite, and hands-on materials based research with a range of tools for digital recording and output.

This course includes technical demonstrations, in-class shoots and critiques of student work. Basic history, theory and aesthetics of related media are presented. Special emphasis is given to the rapid concepting, shooting, and editing of effective short social media content.

This course prepares students to learn and apply strategic digital communication principles for analyzing the impact of social media messages. Using data recollection and analysis techniques, students will learn how to interpret data strategically, identify relevant consumer insights, and create actionable plans that respond to challenges and opportunities.

This hands-on course will explore new developments in immersive media, mixed and virtual realities, alternative and embedded screens, physical computing, AI, biosensors, trackers, etc., and explore how those tools can provide essential data on how clients and users interact with products.

This course covers theories and research techniques needed for understanding digital audiences' behavior and user experience. Social psychology and consumer behavior theories and concepts will help students to identify audiences' needs, values, and attitudes. Students will learn to apply research methods (e.g. surveys, interviews, focus groups, eye-tracking, facial mapping, and user data retrieval) for understanding user interactions with content on social and emerging media platforms. 

This course introduces students to the processes of creating and managing media projects, including ideation, prototyping, planning and budgeting, media asset management, workflows, and team communication. Students will demonstrate their mastery of creation and management concepts by researching, writing, and presenting proposals for their own media projects. 

This course explores how industry practices, government regulation, and legal regimes influence the development and viability of emerging media. It covers subjects such as media ownership structures and industry competition, intellectual property, defamation and privacy law, SLAPP litigation, employee non-disclosure agreements, and wireless spectrum regulation.

This special topics course takes a deep dive into a new technology or emerging social media technique (such as VR, XR, AI, A/B testing, eye-tracking, gaming, virtual production, etc). Students will work in teams and use relevant tools in the UX Media Lab to create a speculative media project.

This hands-on course is a practical introduction to motion graphics and data visualization for social and emerging media. Students will learn how to use storyboards and tools like After Effects to create intros, logos, opening animations, animated data graphs, and other digital assets that effectively communicate innovative ideas and tell compelling stories through motion graphics.

The capstone project is the final course in the MASEM curriculum and culminates in a project that demonstrates the student’s expertise in the field. The capstone experience is largely independent and students will plan and produce a project under the supervision of a faculty advisor. Students who choose to do so will have the opportunity to coordinate work on their projects with a nonprofit organization or a business in the Tampa Bay area.