MRUniversity, the “massive open online course” project of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, has just launched several new courses today, including one on the economics of the media, featuring guests lessons by yours truly and Adam Thierer. From the site:
>In the Information Age, media is everywhere. This course will help you make sense of it all, providing insight into the structure of media firms, the nature of their products and how they make money.
>Is media biased? Is consolidation of media companies bad for consumers? This course will address those questions as well as how the government effects the structure of media through policies such as net neutrality, copyright, TV regulation and spectrum allocation.
>This course will provide a general background on the research from economists on media and journalism. There will be a lot of economics and not too much math.
>If you pass the final exam, you will earn our “Economics of the Media” certificate on your profile.
Putting together a couple of 5-minute lessons was a lot harder than it sounded when we were asked to contribute, and it’s given me greater appreciation for what Tyler and Alex are doing with this project. It worth the hard work, though. They are reaching thousands of students for much the same effort that would go into a regular university course.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.