Swinburne’s Media and Communications students bridge theory and practice through two capstone units that combine academic social media research with hands-on industry work placement experiences.
In the final year of the Bachelor of Media and Communications, Swinburne students majoring in Social Media must complete two key units: Researching Social Media Publics and Social Media Industry Project.
The first unit focuses on the academic practice of research, analysis, and writing. Students start by studying current issues or trends on social media. These could range from a certain TikTok video or a meme going viral to a disturbing or unusual trend among youngsters that is emerging on a particular social media platform.
Exploring Current Social Media Trends
Students then explore the topics that interest them, both as they appear on current social media platforms as well as among published academic papers. From this initial exploration, the students will learn whether there is a gap in knowledge about this topic and whether the topic is worth researching further.
Once they have identified the topic they will pursue, the students will embark on a ten-week academic journey culminating in a research plan for what would amount to a two-year Research Masters. This journey takes the students from identifying a potential research topic to asking the key research questions, designing the research methods and making important ethical considerations in terms of surveying and interviewing subjects, as well as undertaking a literature review on the topic.
One of the aims of this unit is to help students experience an important part of what an academic career entails. Apart from teaching, a lecturer’s life involves research and publishing findings in peer-reviewed academic journals. Students at the end of their three-year Media and Communications degree would be contemplating their next steps, and pursuing an academic career would be one of the options. Undertaking the rigours of Researching Social Media Publics not only gives them a taste of an academic life but also provides them with a Research Plan that could well be the basis of their Master’s in research.
Some of the topics that students have designed a research plan for are Shaping Sudanese Digital Publics on TikTok: Cultural Visibility, Transnational Identity, and Representation in a Global Media Landscape; Popcorn Brain in the Age of TikTok: Exploring the Cognitive and Emotional Impact of Short-Form Content on Malaysian Teenagers; and The Role of Social Media in Online Gambling in Malaysia: Investigating Influencer Tactics and Public Engagement.
Real-World Application
On the flip side of the proverbial coin, third-year students must also pass the Social Media Industry Project, a unit that requires students to have hands-on experience in the real world. Quite the opposite of the academic unit Researching Social Media Publics, this unit requires students to undertake a work placement in an organisation for the semester.
The organisation could be either a for-profit or non-profit entity, but each will have a social media presence. Some may have a team devoted to managing the organisation’s social media platforms while others will have a small team sharing tasks in all aspects of the organisation’s operations.
Students are randomly assigned to an organisation at the start of the semester and after an initial meeting with the Workplace Supervisor and Academic Supervisor, they start working on a Project Proposal that details the semester’s work – their Social Media Industry Project. With the assistance of their lecturer who is their Academic Supervisor, the students will design a project that aligns with the organisation’s aims. This project could see them creating content to post on the organisation’s social media platforms, writing a regular blog for the organisation’s website, or recording and editing videos for Instagram reels, YouTube or TikTok.
Diverse Workplace Opportunities
Depending on the organisation’s aims and the student’s abilities, tasks may vary greatly. This past semester, students have been assigned to a range of different organisations. These included small non-profit organisations such as the locally-based Sarawak Eco Warriors, small social enterprises such as WormingUP and YourgutBB, for-profit organisations like Awah Café, the English Language Centre, John’s Pie, Plants for Plastic, and RUFI’s Cafe as well as a large social enterprise like Kuala Lumpur-based Food Aid Foundation.
Two annual events, the Kuching Heritage Race and the Rainforest Youth Summit also welcomed students to work on their social media, promoting their event, and encouraging greater participation. Finally, Swinburne Australia’s online journal, Other Terrain, was also offered as a workplace organisation, opening up the role to a student to be involved in promoting the online journal through its various social media platforms as well as learning tasks undertaken by student editors.
Through this unit, the Social Media Industry Project, students practise different aspects of what they have learned over the past two years of their studies. In their assigned workplace, they use skills they had learned creating content using audio, photography, and videography and editing tools and equipment. The students turn theory into practice; designing and implementing strategies, interviewing real subjects, creating “podreels” from recorded interviews, writing blogs, preparing news releases, and working at press conferences.
The students learn that it is not acceptable to offer the excuse that “I’m an introvert” when they are required to mingle with clients at an event or to work with strangers on a new workplace team. They learn to take the initiative to come up with new ideas or to work on new content while waiting for feedback from their supervisors, and they learn to review and revise their work over and over until the supervisor is satisfied. Some ideas, infographics, posters or videos will be rejected, and this is something they have to learn to accept in the real world.
Reflective Learning: Bridging University and Professional Life
The final assessment for the Social Media Industry Project is the writing of a reflective essay. This is highly beneficial as it requires students to reflect and think critically about their work ethic, behaviour, and successes and failures in the work placement. An honest reflection will do wonders to a student’s progress in the working world. In fact, one important thing many students wrote about was how the working world differs from university life.
In university, their studies are set with fixed assessments and deadlines while in the workplace, changes can be enforced suddenly and without recourse. The students have to learn to be flexible and to adapt to new requirements and deadlines in the real world.
University life is supposed to prepare us for the real world, and Swinburne’s Media and Communications students learn this through their final two units, Researching Social Media Publics and Social Media Industry Project. A Danish exchange student told me at the end of this semester that this had been the best semester of her entire undergraduate studies, and it was due to these two units. Her studies had been mostly theory based, but these two units made her put into practice the theories she had learned. That was validation indeed.
Organisations interested in hosting Swinburne students for work placements are welcome to contact Dr Christina Yin at [email protected]
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus. Dr Christina Yin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Design and Arts at Swinburne’s Faculty of Business, Design and Arts.