Drury University’s Graduate Level Social Media Program Content
Drury University offers both seated classes and online webinar classes as a means of providing training using best practices, texts, and research compiled in new media communications. Students who successfully complete Drury’s social media graduate course will receive 3 hours of graduate credit that is transferable to accredited universities accepting social media courses within their degree offerings.
Classical education joined with modern innovation
Students will be taught how to design and pilot social media campaigns. Going beyond technology skill development, students will gain media management skills and the ability to adapt to the changing landscape of integrated media. Upon completion, they will receive a social media certificate from Drury University to demonstrate competency in social media from training achieved via an accredited, graduate level curriculum.
Program Highlights
Nuts & Bolts
Drury University chose to use The Social Media Survival Guide (Hay, 2011) as the main text for the course because it is one of the most comprehensive and pragmatic social media resources available. The book provides the detail needed to master social media tools and implement their use into overall marketing efforts online. The course will lead students in how to connect and expand a brand on the social web. Maneuvering through RSS feeds, widgets, applications and plug-ins, the course will turn social media students into seasoned practitioners by teaching them how to apply these tools to fulfill specified goals.
Media Content & Usage
This section of the course will focus on mass-communication research that has examined how and why people use certain media to fulfill communication needs. Using the uses-and-gratification tradition as a foundation, we will trace the evolution of media and consider how audiences responded to those changes over the decades. We will investigate how social media upset the gatekeeper/audience equation and consider how content can be more important than technology when building and maintaining a social-media community. The section will conclude by looking at ways to develop content best suited for the audience you are trying to reach.
Public Relations and Marketing Communications Campaigns
Social media can transform an organization’s public relations and marketing efforts, but use of these new technologies must be tied to a solid marketing communications plan. In this section of the course, we’ll explore how to strategize your organization’s social media presence. You’ll learn how to create achievable public relations and marketing communications objectives, identify and reach influencers, leverage social media as a relationship building tool with key audiences, build and enhance brand awareness, and evaluate campaign outcomes in the online world. Drawing on case studies, participants will discover how innovative organizations are using social media to reach audiences in ways never imagined.
Sociocultural & Narrative Analysis
This portion of the course will investigate socially mediated reality per the frameworks of folksonomies and narrativity. While traditionally mediated conversations have imposed a rather lengthy feedback loop thereby incurring a fixation on inputs and outputs, social media usage provides the perfect space for assessing discursive throughputting. We will investigate (and practice!) how social media and social networks activate the features of a narrative worldview, how they provide space for web 2.0 and 3.0 symbolic practices, and how they demonstrate conversational turn taking while constituting publics.
Don’t hesitate to email or call with any questions!
Curt Gilstrap, Ph.D.
Director, Social Media Certificate
Director, Graduate Program in Communication
Asst. Professor of Communication
Drury University
cgilstrap01@drury.edu
417. 873.6948
Nuts & Bolts
Drury University chose to use A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization as the main text for the course because it is one of the most comprehensive and pragmatic social media resources available. The book provides the detail needed to master social media tools and implement their use into overall marketing efforts online. The course will lead students in how to connect and expand a brand on the social web. Maneuvering through RSS feeds, widgets, applications and plug-ins, the course will turn social media students into seasoned practitioners by teaching them how to apply these tools to fulfill specified goals.
Media Content & Usage
This section of the course will focus on mass-communication research that has examined how and why people use certain media to fulfill communication needs. Using the uses-and-gratification tradition as a foundation, we will trace the evolution of media and consider how audiences responded to those changes over the decades. We will investigate how social media upset the gatekeeper/audience equation and consider how content can be more important than technology when building and maintaining a social-media community. The section will conclude by looking at ways to develop content best suited for the audience you are trying to reach.
Public Relations and Marketing Communications Campaigns
Social media can transform an organization’s public relations and marketing efforts, but use of these new technologies must be tied to a solid marketing communications plan. In this section of the course, we’ll explore how to strategize your organization’s social media presence. You’ll learn how to create achievable public relations and marketing communications objectives, identify and reach influencers, leverage social media as a relationship building tool with key audiences, build and enhance brand awareness, and evaluate campaign outcomes in the online world. Drawing on case studies, participants will discover how innovative organizations are using social media to reach audiences in ways never imagined.
Sociocultural & Narrative Analysis
This portion of the course will investigate socially mediated reality per the frameworks of folksonomies and narrativity. While traditionally mediated conversations have imposed a rather lengthy feedback loop thereby incurring a fixation on inputs and outputs, social media usage provides the perfect space for assessing discursive throughputting. We will investigate (and practice!) how social media and social networks activate the features of a narrative worldview, how they provide space for web 2.0 and 3.0 symbolic practices, and how they demonstrate conversational turn taking while constituting publics.
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