Top Three Course Takeaways
- Identify and narrate a professional identity.
- Analyze branding strategies and related theories in computer-mediated contexts.
- Create a personal branding strategy for social media.
Course Topics
Types of professional identities
Sensemaking and professional identity
Emotional Branding
Social media influencers
Identifying and communicating personal brands online
Theories of relationship development on social media
Pitfalls of self-branding
Course Intensity:
Course Description
This course was designed to facilitate critical reflection on how people present their personal and professional identities in online spaces, and students will be exposed to academic and popular press writing on these topics.
After completing activities to explore one’s personal brand, students will be introduced to computer-mediated communication theories to help better understand how different online behaviors might contribute to their impression management efforts. At the end of the course, students will either conduct an audit of their current personal brand or they will design a personal branding strategy that they can use in the future.
Learning Outcomes
Distinguish between your personal, social, and organizational identities, and explicate the role they each play in professional satisfaction and personal well-being
Communicate a professional identity narrative.
- Explain the mechanics of emotional branding and how it intersects with personal branding
Analyze the personal brand of an online influencer or micro-celebrity
Apply computer-mediated communication theory and research to either analyze your existing personal brand, or to develop a personal branding strategy
Problematize some of the demands of personal branding from critical cultural perspectives