ECON 47: Media Markets and Social Good

Course Description

This class will apply tools from economics and related social sciences to study the functioning of digital and traditional media markets and their impact on society. The guiding question will be: when and how do media best serve the social good? Topics will include the economics of two-sided markets, advertising, tech regulation, media bias, polarization, misinformation, social media, digital addiction, propaganda, race, gender, and the role of media in autocracy, corruption, protests and censorship. The course will give students a non-technical introduction to social science empirical methods, including regression analysis, experimental and quasi-experimental methods, and machine learning. Prerequisites: Introductory economics (e.g., AP economics or ECON 1), introductory statistics/econometrics (e.g., AP statistics, ECON 102a, or STATS 60), and some prior exposure to programming.