Those were the days…
I get the feeling a lot of people who were actively involved in early online communities and blogging miss the relative simplicity that the smaller number of participants provided. As I commented recently on Virginia Yonker’s blog, the key is in how these were small enough to be easily identifiable and manageable. Being a relatively late adopter, I can appreciate how the affordances of current social media has enabled mass use, yet with this comes a radically different dynamic of social engagement, which is not necessarily more distributed but infinitely more populated and complex.
Many see the answer in developing Personal Learning Environments / Networks (PLE/N) and employing technology-enabled methods such as subscription and aggregation to keep up with it all. Yet does the adoption of a learner-centric network logic require us to develop aggressive, neo-liberal marketing strategies with an emphasis on self-promotion and immediacy to get noticed? Is this at the expense of the richer communication and identity formation associated with traditional modes of participation and interaction? There remains a natural human inclination to want to engage in, and become identified as a member of, communities, but how can this be cultivated in a more network-based culture?
Does this equate to a trade-off, where we embrace the advantages of an expansive engagement with wider networks and multifarious communities, or do we restrict ourselves to fewer, or even singular, localised groups?
May 7th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Great questions. I decided to blog my answer.
May 13th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Definitely !, social media is becoming awfully complicated not only with the number of networks available but with the varied level of participation as well. I am gradually being educated on the complexity of some of these networks. Once positive aspect is there is a lot of scope for research about complex interactions within these communities.
May 17th, 2010 at 8:49 am
[…] her lengthy response to a previous post of mine, Virginia Yonkers offers further insight into how we perceive social networks and […]
May 22nd, 2010 at 1:34 am
Definitely !, social media is becoming awfully complicated not only with the number of networks available but with the varied level of participation as well. I am gradually being educated on the complexity of some of these networks. Once positive aspect is there is a lot of scope for research about complex interactions within these communities.