In just the last ten years, much of the world has been transformed through social media. The culture has moved from a consumer culture to a participatory culture, one where the consumers became producers. In this course, we will document this cultural revolution through an analysis of Google, Facebook, Youtube, Blogging, Wikipedia, Twitter, Second Life, and mobile phones. More importantly, we will be asking how this cultural change impacts the church. How do we pursue the reign of God in these new cultures? How do we avoid the temptation to uncritically celebrate these new technologies on the one hand or to advocate a Luddite (just say ‘no’) approach on the other? To approach these issues, we will be drawing on historic missiological understandings as well as contemporary insights to seriously engage participatory cultures with the gospel of Christ.    

What Others Have Thought:    

"This course opened me up to the whole social media world. It gave the theological, anthropological and philosophical basis for why it is important for the church to enter this world as a mission field. It also provided excellent practical suggestions for how to get up to speed with the various types of social media."      

Course Project:      

All students will do a theological reflection project at the end of the class that will summarize key insights from the course materials. As part of the project the students will create a social media plan for their particular congregation.   

Sample Readings From This Course May Include:     

Bruns, Axel. Blogs,Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond. Peter Lang. 2008. 

Halavais, Alexander. Search Engine Society. Polity. 2009. 

Hipps, Shane. Flickering Pixels. Zondervan. 2009.     

Li, Charlene and Josh Bernhoff. Groundswell. Harvard Business Press. 2008. 

If you would like more information about this course please email the DMIN office at dmin@fuller.edu.

For a sample course description please click here.  NOTE: This is not to be used as a source for course preparation.