The biggest waste of time I've had at UCLA. You explore three unrelated topics every week. One is lecture, the other is discussion, and the other are "readings." Readings consist of one short story per week + a lot of outdated videos (circa 2014) that won't be discussed in lecture. Lectures are boring and very unprepared. Most of the time professor uses slides that are copied and pasted straight from the internet and sometimes he can't seem to recall why those slides are included in the powerpoint so he just skips them. Discussion is 2 hours long and quite sad. If you came to UCLA to learn new things, don't take this class. You can read a magazine and learn about the same amount of things you'll learn here

Although the class was asynchronous, the lectures were so easy to watch and actually interesting. There's only about 2 assignments per week which can easily be done in under an hour, discussion is just participating and MacFadyen is extremely accommodating and dropped so many assignments to make the work load much more manageable. If enough people email, he will change the deadlines for certain assignments. Your final project is based on the previous midterm project but can be changed if you want to. Overall, this class was easily one of the easiest classes to take and actually interesting with looking at apps like tiktok, instagram, snapchat, etc.

This is one of my favorite classes that I have ever taken. Although the lectures were asynchronous, Professor MacFayden did an excellent job making the lectures engaging. Each one included relatable content and examples that made the material digestible. At the beginning of the quarter, students expressed their concerns about the volume of assignments and without any resistance Prof. MacFayden changed the entire syllabus. He truly takes student feedback into account and will make the necessary accommodations to ensure that the emphasis is on learning and discussion rather than your grade. The assignments themselves are often free response style and are very broad. Each week there was a one page quiz and a media exercise that will require a combination of writing and specific examples from social media. The final built upon the midterm, both of which were very flexible. This is a very easy GE and I would highly recommend it.

Definitely an interesting course. The lectures were engaging and interesting, but discussion sections were a bore. Discussion participation was mandatory and felt like a waste of time. Overall, the course was an interesting way to think deeper about social media and storytelling, and it was a relatively easy A. Only relatively easy because there was a decent amount of work for the class, roughly two pages of single spaced writing a week, but half of it was graded for completion. The other half was graded easily as well, but it still consumed a decent amount of time. I would definitely take this class again, even though my TA was a bit bothersome.

This class is awesome (although I might be biased because I want to go into digital sociology), and gives you a great picture of online communication. Very much applicable to a lot of different fields and concepts. Professor MacFadyen's lectures (through video, not Zoom or in-person) were really interesting and one of my favorite aspects of the class. There is a lot of writing if you are into that, but grading was pretty flexible and I don't believe anything was graded harshly. As long as you can include topics from both within the class and outside sources, you will do fine. Discussion sessions were mandatory and introduced me to some great texts and an amazing supplementary (optional) book to read, but felt like a chore sometimes especially when everyone was forced to contribute to the conversation (99% of the discussion time felt like people just sharing their responses). Overall though, I highly recommend this class because you will at least learn some valuable things through the lectures. Wish it was in person!

Lots of people complained about this class, but I found it not so bad. The professor is really kind though, and is willing to change the course workload if you just ask. We had more assignments to do but he got rid of them because we said we didn't think they would work out. He also got rid of a week's assignment because we wanted more time to work on our midterm. This class was asynchronous so we had to watch lectures all on our own time. The problem I had was that the lecture videos were super long (there would be 3-5 lectures posted, often being over an hour long).

You have to watch the lecture videos to understand the assignments, or else you'll be confused. You could easily just skim the lectures though (I watched them on 2x speed and often skipped around). I wouldn't say you have to watch ALL of them, maybe just ask your classmates what they found relevant to the week's assignments and just watch those.
However, the lectures just seem irrelevant to the entire class topic. At first we had a fun assignment to mock a facebook profile/instagram profile, but then thereafter the exams were more written based than creating. There also were people who had harsh TAs (I was lucky to have a lenient TA- Jake is awesome) so they would get graded on assignments that would lead them to have low A's.

Assignments are as follows:
Media Exercise: based on that week's topic, state/create a mock up social media thing
Quick Quiz: based on the lecture videos, respond to prompts. Posted a week early so you have an entire week to finish them
Midterm: basically an essay planning out what you're going to do for the final
Final: design a campaign to persuade people to join you. It has to be a campaign that has a purpose to do something (for example an animal shelter persuading people to adopt their animals) You have to decide on what social media platform is best (eg Instagram) and mock up a design. You could also not design it but write everything out if you feel like you have no designing skills.

Overall, this class was not bad. The workload was manageable, but I would not take it if you're really not interested in the idea of storytelling. I thought it would be fun and talk about fictional storytelling, but it's more based on the history of stories and how stories are used for advertising campaigns. Also if you get a harsh TA, it won't be pleasant.

Probably the only class where you’ll get to watch TikTok during discussion section.

All jokes aside, this class was okay. It was a very easy class but somewhat boring at times. The professor’s lectures are okay and the discussion sections were mostly us watching videos and talking about social media.

Most of the topics are kinda straightforward (what is a story, conflict, advertising, persuasion). The social media aspect of the class creates some interesting assignments.

Every week, we had a small quiz and a “media exercise.” These assignments related to social media sites in some way (making a Facebook profile for a famous person, using Instagram to tell stories).

The workload is not bad. Initially, there was a short story reading in addition to the quiz and media exercise. We actually convinced the professor to cut down on the weekly assignments.

Life value is quite low. I watched all the lectures but felt like most of them were unnecessarily convoluted. Make sure you communicate with the professor/TA via email for help.

If you are looking for a (mostly) easy GE with mildly interesting assignments, this is the class for you. Also, you get to watch TikTok so if you’re into that, then great.

great class I would take again, if you do the work and do the essay and go to discussion you should do well. going to lecture gets repeative and people stopped going toward the end of the quarter. there wasn't a midterm or final just papers. TA was helpful, stories were interesting to read and professor was a chill and funny guy

Overall I think people get A's but you do have to work for it. Also, the material is deceptively convoluted and half the time during the lecture you will be very confused. I didn't attend the lectures and focused on the discussion and this was enough to get the grade I wanted.

Take this class if you want an easy A without ever needing to show up to lectures. I chose this class because the social media aspect seemed very interesting, but the professor ended up mainly saying the same few obvious points every single lecture that by week 5 I stopped going altogether. There are 3 assignments that go into the gradebook for the class: 1 presentation, 1 midterm essay, and 1 final essay. They essays are both extremely open ended and really have nothing to do with the things talked about in lecture: the midterm was a poem analysis and the final was either an expansion on your presentation or a argumentative essay for a social advocacy group's cause. Take this class if you want an easy GE but don't care for learning any actual material.