The last assignments

After one week this course is over! Hope the students have enjoyed and learned at least almost as much as the professors!

Peer feedback is an elementary part of this course!

The last team assignment is to give peer feedback for the second group project outcome. Some teams have already started!

• Team Austria will assess team Spain report, 
• team Ireland will give feedback to team Austria, 
• team UK will share their thoughts about team Ireland's effort, 
• team Finland will do an evaluation of the outcome made by team UK and 
• team Spain will make their review of the report produced by the Finland team.

There will also be two individual tasks, both about feedback. You will find them in your email very soon.

The deadline for all student input of this course is Wednesday 28th May. Thank you!

Team project #2 - research on social media usage in building fan communities

The second team team research project is about finding out how social media is used for community building and promotion.
The Eurovision song contest is used for research material - hundred millions of people will try to help their favourite to win using social media channels.

Example of a Twitter search helping to find the right
#hashtags to search and @usernames to follow.

The steps needed to complete the assignment are:

1. Organise your team Create the project wiki folder of you team in the EVA Social Media 2014 folder.

Make the schedule of team hangouts, chats and other meetings. The professors are available for meetings. Try Antti first, then Cai.

2. This course is a collaborative enterprise. You are not supposed to split the project in independent tasks and then merge the work of each student to a research report. Division of labor is allowed and necessary, but at least the research questions and the final report must be done in interaction, collaboratively.

3. Design your research questions. Some possible:
* what kind of campaign does the representative of country x have on Facebook and Twitter?
* what kind of campaign does the broadcasting company involved of country x have on Facebook and Twitter, if any?
* what kind of campaign does the record label of representative of country x have on Facebook and Twitter, if any?
* it is obvious that there is a lot of noise on Facebook and Twitter to support the artist in her/his country. But you can't get any votes from you own country. What is done to attract the audiences in other countries?
* Are there fan communities in other countries? If you are the Sweden team, can you find international fan communities to support your representative? How do these communities operate?
* Are there any differences in use of Facebook and Twitter for promotion and community building?
In short: How is social media and communities on social media used to win Eurovision? Or is it not only about Eurovision, but about something beyond? (Remember though that your research object is NOT the artist or the song BUT the functions and usage of social media).

    A lot of research material; 700 000+ fans in this Facebook community.
You'll find more relevant FB pages and groups to follow, also ones to
support thecandidate of your team.

4. Follow what happens:
the weeks before the event
first semifinal May 6
second semifinal May 8
Grand Final May 10.

5. Analyse what happened and write the research report with your team.
The research report is structured like this:
- Who we are
- our research questions were
- our results are
- how we did it
- questions for future research
(Some students need to know how long the report should be. Aim at 4000-6000 characters.)

Your complete research project is in your team folder, shared with anyone with the link.

On the blog you publish an abstract or executive summary of your report - a maximum of 2600 characters + pics. Add label Research report #2. Add a link to the blog post to the complete report in your Google Drive folder.

6. Report deadline: Wednesday May 21  

Personal assignment #3: Analyse Eurovision Song Contest

This assignment is preparation for our second and last team research project. Our second research project studies the use of Social Media by Eurovision Song Contest artists and fan communities around Europe. It does not matter whether we are Eurovision friends or not - Eurovision offers along with UEFA football cups the best selection of material for European studies of Social Media communication and community building.

The ESC 2014 countries. Time to choose the one you will follow with
your team soon!

To prepare we need some insight in what Eurovision is about:
Have a look at all the Eurovision Song Contest artists and winners. Analyse how they reflect developments in media culture and communication.

Try to find at least six landmarks on Eurovision timeline 1956-2013 where you can see that changes in European politics and/or Civil Society and/or technology and/or performance have changed the way Eurovision reflects societal change and/or communication/media culture.

If you don't want to spend hours watching and listening to the winners, then have a look at the collections showing short versions of all in e.g. 30 minutes - just go to Youtube and search for "eurovision winners".
(Some of those winners are really worth watching entirely. Which song is your all time favourite?)

Wonder what Eurovision has to do with social media in communication and community building? Don't worry, you will find out. (And it is not required to be a Eurovision fan to pass this course. But ability to do some media culture analysis is.)

There is a sheet in our course folder named "Eurovision timeline 1956-2013." Scroll it down to find your name and produce input to at least six cells.

Are you unsure what I'm expecting? Here's some hints what you may observe:
- audiovisual technology (example: introduction of colour TV)
- relationship to audience
- new trend in music style
- new trend in lyrics
- change on European political scene

And the length of input?
Short is beautiful, and content in at least in six time slots (the more the better in this case)
You write short observations like:
- reggae became popular
- the peace movement influenced the lyrics
- ladies started to perform in underwear instead of evening dresses - and they looked hungry

Deadline: April 14

Team project #1 - research on social media usage in a specific field

Here are the steps to complete team project #1:

1. Choose your research objects
First choose three to five enterprises, associations or other players in the field of your choice who use social media for their promotion and/or other purposes. Then discuss about and decide on your research questions

2. Create your research questions
A research project of course starts with research questions. Please start your project by formulating some questions on your wiki page (=Google Drive document) like:
- Are there different contents and topics on the web site and Social Media channels?
- Are there different target groups for the web site and Social Media channels?
- Are there signs of community building somewhere?
- Are there differences in the way the research object presents itself on the web site and Social Media channels?
- Is the research object investing more efforts for media presence on any platform than others
(The team chooses the research questions, these are examples of appropriate ones)

This excellent illustration was designed by team Emilia Kwiatkowska,
Adina Pascalau, Kristina Põldots, Otto Varrela in their report 2012.
Their research object was famous graphic designers.

3. Create your working platforms
You will use a wiki (Google Drive Doc) - not the blog - for your team work on this research project.
It is because a blog is not made for collaborative work on a document. The idea is that you work together to write the research report.
- you use Google Hangout and/or other chats (also Google Group if you like) for exchanging ideas about how to do your research project
- you write together the report on the wiki (on the wiki comments and chat very useful)
- you consult the Facebook hotline if you meet problems using the wiki
- on the blog you will find lessons about  work on Google docs
- you publish your finished research report on our course blog

4. Your research report should include:
0. List of team members
1. Research questions
2. How we did it
3. What we found
4. Conclusions, suggestions
5. Sources

The length of the report?
The report should be both concise and address itself to outcomes of searching appropriate answers to the research questions. You might need one or two pages + maybe illustrations?
Deadline: March 28

Assignment 1: Introduce yourself!

The first assignment of this course is to post an introduction of yourself on this blog.

We want to learn who you are, where and in which department/degree programme you study and what are your professional ambitions; what will be your fields of expertise and what kind of jobs you aim at doing.

Please find instructions how to post on this blog below in lesson two: Start Posting!
If you have already sent the email address you prefer to use with Google, you have got an invitation to be author of this blog.

Don't endanger your privacy, this blog will be visible to everybody on the net. But please tell us anyway about a couple of your passions/hobbies. I'm not afraid to tell the entire world that on my free-time I'm busy with my family, vegetarian cooking, football and rails.
Please consider also sharing a photo of you and a couple of pics of your hobbies.

We might use the information about hobbies for team building.

Please label your introduction "Introduction"

Deadline:  March 14th

When travelling, I shoot trams. This piece of beauty I found in Stockholm

Here I am posing in front of the KC stadium in Hull
before the Hull City game