Understanding Media by Understanding Google
By Prof. Owen R. Youngman, Northwestern University
About the Course
Google Inc. is one of the key success stories of the Internet era. The company has expanded beyond its original search business through innovation and acquisition to touch the lives of nearly every person who lives life online. For example, Americans spend more than 3,400 hours per year using consumer media, the field where Google’s impact is most profound, and citizens around the world must understand what the company has wrought not only to control their offline and online environments, but also to interact and engage successfully with anyone in our professional and personal lives.
Enrollees in this course learn how to understand the tactics that modern media companies, journalists, marketers, politicians, technologists, and social networks are using to reach them and affect their behavior. They learn how to adopt strategies that put them on an even footing with these entities in achieving their own communications goals. They
think about, react to, and write about excerpts from half a dozen important books; read a sampling of newspaper and magazine reportage from Google’s entire history;
monitor news sites and specialized blogs about the company and its competitors while the course is in session;
take note of their own usage of Google and other online resources; and
learn how to anticipate the future impact of the company and its competitors on aspects of the media such as information consumption, creation, and distribution.
Course Syllabus
Week 1: The Age of Google
Introduction: Why study Google and the media?
Search and Research
Week 2: Google and Publishing
Google and News
Google and Books
Week 3: Google and Advertising
How and Why the Magic Works
Advertising Personalization and Privacy
Week 4: Google and Video
Google, YouTube, and You
YouTube (and Google) and the News
Week 5: Google and Mobile
Google and Smartphones
Google and “Wearable”
Week 6: Google, Social Media, and Privacy
Google’s Social Circle
The Private, The Public, and the Politic(s)
Recommended Background
First and foremost, students should enjoy reading! They should also be curious about the companies, including but not limited to Google, whose products and services have come to define the Internet. Finally, students should also be willing to examine their own habits and behaviors in new contexts and be open to new ideas and opinions.
Suggested Readings
The key ideas in this course have been gleaned from the following books, among others, and you are strongly encouraged to borrow or purchase them. They are fun to read and endlessly fascinating, containing both strong reporting and strong opinions. Use any format you prefer, digital or analog. These links are to print versions, from which you can easily navigate to the e-book versions if you prefer.
- What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest-
- Growing Company in the History of the World, by Jeff Jarvis
- Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, by Ken Auletta
- In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, by Steven Levy
- The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing
- What We Read and How We Think, by Eli Pariser
- The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry), by Siva Vaidhyanathan
- The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, by John Battelle
Additional readings and resources will be detailed in the syllabus.
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