Social Media Educates
From Studyplace
by Matt Curinga
Ulises Mejias asked us to explore the question: how does social media educate? StudyPlace asks the more general question, what educates?
- To ask what educates is to ask what has the potential, the power to change a person. It challenges us to explicate how and why and when and where that potential works or fails to work. It provokes us to see that what educates, what changes a person, may work for good or for ill. [1]
For me, StudyPlace's article brings two important concepts to bear on Ulises' question. First, it gives education the power to change us. Second, it compels us to look for what educates in the lived experiences of people. Initially considering Ulises' question, we are tempted to think about pedagogy and schooling, and how they can be improved by incorporating social media. I firmly believe that social media has a lot to offer formal education, but I don't think that the most interesting ways social media educates are in the classroom.
Media and culture, inside and outside of schools, educate. Unlike schools, media permeates our lived experience. Where as school is (unfortunately) often distinct, compartmentalized, and irrelevant, digital media and technology are integrated into all aspects of our lives, positioning them well to educate. All cultural artifacts internalize assumptions, ideologies, world views. It follows that dominant forms of media embed the cultural hegemony of privileged classes, presenting this ideology to us as natural, common sense[2].
I believe that it is within this context that social media educates as well. My hope is that social media, and its assumptions and ideologies, represent a true foil to dominant/traditional culture. I want to explore this by looking at two cases where social media challenges the received wisdom of our culture.
1. Homo economicus
Social media refutes the view that we are solely, or most powerfully, motivated by personal gain. A central assumption of social production is that participants will contribute their time, energy, and creativity without a clear expectation of remuneration. In practice, the peer production of free and open source software bears this out. While certainly not solely driven by interest, altruism, or entertainment, the open source movement cannot be explained away using traditional economic models of motivation. A quick glance at SourceForge shows over 92,336 open source software projects. While capital has certainly altered the shape of major projects like Linux, only a small fraction of the 92k+ projects operate within the traditional parameters of economic motivation.
2. Consensus
One of the most damaging and miseducative practices of dominant media is the facade of consensus. Traditional media presumes to be authoritative and expert led. It marginalizes dissenting voices and silences dialogue. The possibility for debate is so central to social media that it may be the only common thread running through its various constituent forms. At the same time, controversy is shunned in almost every type of traditional media.
Some examples of consensus from traditional media:
- we don't see the drafts of a novel or the arguments between authors, editors, marketers, etc.
- we are not privy to the process our news media use to select stories
- in film, we only get to see the polished release of the movie studio (with DVDs now offering carefully edited director's cuts, alternate endings, and interviews aimed to increase sales and marketing)
- our chance of voicing our opinion about print 'news' rest in the hands of editors who, at their discretion, may pick ours as a letter to the editor
Consider instead the comments and trackbacks on blogs; the history, discussion pages, diffs, and rollbacks on wikis; the versioned (with authors) code available through open source; and the ubiquitous ability to leave comments on just about any other form that is considered social media. Not only do the practices of these communities support debate and controversy, but it is built into the software itself. In this respect, when social media functions well, it represents a significant shift in ideology. Borrowing Gramsci's words, social media is "not an instrument of government of dominant groups in order to gain the consent of and exercise hegemony over subaltern classes; it is the expression of these subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even unpleasant ones, and in avoiding deceptions (impossible) by the ruling class and even more by themselves." [3]
While far from exhaustive, the above cases exemplify what I consider the potential of social media to educate. At its best, it represents an honest, critical alternative to the type of market driven media that represents the interests of capital in the guise of communication and education. While this essay may suffer because it does not explore social media at its worst, I contend that it is not overly or unduly optimistic.
- ↑ StudyPlace.org, What Educates? ¶8. retrieved February 11, 2007
- ↑ I'm drawing a lot on Gramsci here, but he is certainly not the only one to support this opinion.
- ↑ Forgacs, D., Ed. (2000). The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. New York, New York University Press. p. 197
