Overview
- Award Leader, MA Social Media
- Birmingham School of Media
- Faculty of Performance, Media & English
- Email: dave.harte@bcu.ac.uk
- Phone: 0121 331 5421
Areas of expertise
- Social Media
- Creative and Cultural Industries
Current Activities
Dave is working on a range of projects with the creative business community, including one examining use of Apple’s iPad in small creative firms. As the new Library of Birmingham is taking shape Dave is working with their ICT project board to help foster connections with the city’s digital media sector. As the chair of Birmingham Science City’s Digital Media Group he’s also working on developing a new project related to open data.
Courses
Social Media - MA
Social Media (Distance Learning) - MA
Social Media, Mobile Media and Gamification
Biography
Dave is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications and our award leader for the MA in Social Media. He has recently completed a secondment to Birmingham City Council as Economic Development Manager for Digital Birmingham where he championed the use of social media and digital tools to the city leaders and the business community.
For many years he has worked closely with Birmingham’s vibrant digital media sector acting as a link between the public sector and the business community. Since 2003 he has worked with the regional development agency for the West Midlands on their business clusters strategy and has previously managed a major business support project on their behalf.
Dave is an enthusiastic advocate of social media and blogs at www.daveharte.com as well as managing a local news website for Bournville, a site often cited as an exemplar of its kind.
Dave has recently published a research paper in Creative Industries journal on the development of business cluster in the Digital Media sector. Understanding the role of policy-makers in creating ‘digital’ or ‘creative’ spaces in cities is part of his current research interests.
“There is an awful lot of theoretical work about how you make ‘creative’ places but I’ve been lucky enough to have had a role in developing and writing policy in this area for a number of years now. There’s much still to be done to support Birmingham’s burgeoning digital economy.”
With the university taking an inter-disciplinary approach to its Digital research through the Institute of Digital Experience and Applications (IDEAs), Dave is advising on how the university can best develop links within the public sector to support some of the major digital issues facing local authorities and other public sector organisations.
“Digital Inclusion is a major issue for society and the university can play a key role in helping our partners develop appropriately blended solutions that don’t presume that technology itself is the answer. If cities like Birmingham are going to be successful and prosperous then dealing with its ‘digital divide’ should be a key priority.”