MA in social media, new course offered by Birmingham Uni

The Guardian reported on a new course being offered by Birmingham University - a Masters in social media.

I'm not sure quite how I feel about this to be honest. It's a £4,000, one year full time course. In social media. How on earth are you going to spend a whole academic year studying this stuff? And why are you going to spend £4K doing so? Add on your loss of earnings, and it comes out at a pretty expensive way to play with Twitter.

And you really need to ask what the real benefits of this course are going to be? They struggle even on the Birmingham Uni website, with the first thing they suggest you can do is "become a social media consultant". Which is just what the world needs, natch. Other suggestions include
"develop innovative and alternative media projects", or how about "contribute to the development of the social media industry". You can hear the straws being clutched...

And I'd like to see the field visits that they intend to make ("oh look everyone, here's someone updating their Facebook status in their bedroom").

Having said that, compared to some of the other (rather weird) courses on offer by other academic institutions, this seems almost mainstream. And who am I to tell someone how to spend their time and money.

So good luck to Birmingham for jumping on the gravy train as quickly as they did. Hope it works out for you.