An M.A. in Facebook

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

An M.A. in Facebook: now you can earn academic credit for doing what  
you normally do to avoid schoolwork

Birmingham City University, in England, is offering a Masters degree  
in Facebook and Twitter. Students can now pay £4000 (about $6000) to  
earn credit for doing what they normally do to avoid schoolwork.

While the British government spies on Facebook, and British scientists  
remain intent on proving that Facebook causes autism, British  
academics are busily theorizing social network sites, studying a  
wildly popular phenomenon through the impenetrable jargon of cultural  
studies, the kind of language that no one on Facebook or Twitter would  
ever use.

But it’s not all interrogating heteronormative hermeneutics all the  
time at Birmingham City U. In addition to theory, students in the  
program will be offered “access to a peer group and active community  
of social media practitioners.” Which is theory-speak for saying that,  
like everybody else, the students and faculty at BCU are addicted to  
Facebook and Twitter...



read the rest on the Web of Language:  http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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