The best indycaster project: Analysing and understanding meaningful YouTube content, dialogue and commitment as part of responsible management education

Abstract

In higher education, and in particular within media management courses, educators currently aim to develop new course activities that stimulate students to critically reflect on social media communication. Specifically, students need robust knowledge and skills to critically analyse social media - content (e.g. text, images, sound, video), - dialogue (e.g. comments and replies) and - commitment (e.g. indicators of emotional involvement among participants) to understand the convergence between public and private communication via social networks. With that in mind, we developed a project for 3rd year BA students, that included research activities and operational activities, in which students individually select and analyse the content of special interest (e.g. games, beauty, food, history themed) YouTube channels. Through this ongoing project we (students and lecturers) learn more about independent broadcasters (Indycasters) and specifically about meaningful communication within online communities. In this paper we share our experiences and insights about this project. More importantly, we evaluate how the PRME principles are related to our current teaching approach and discuss sustainable literacy and media literacy as linking factor to these principles. Finally, we provide advice on how other universities may develop similar student led social media analysis projects to enrichen responsible management education.