About This Course: According to Shirky, there are probably a few million people in China whose work can benefit from learning about the “human basics” of social media--both its underlying goals and the limitations that social coordination creates. Social media has become extraordinarily powerful over the years in China. Shirky said that people are “interested in so much of its analysis, whether it’s today’s funny gif or the quarterly results of Baidu versus Tencent.” His series breaks down social media’s consistent social patterns into digestible, insightful episodes that appeal to a variety of audiences including programmers, analysts, mobile phone companies, those looking to launch education businesses, language learning services, or anyone curious about how social media really works. If you want to know more, please go to https://minicourse.shanghai.nyu.edu/.