Social Media
Social Media
Serena Matheson, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Definitions and background
Social media is understood as a set of technologies by which people can create, collaborate, and network and share content (Woodley & Silvestri, 2014). Social media technologies, also known as Web 2.0, are made up of many different types of communication technologies such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, social bookmarking, wall posting, photo and video sharing, etc. (Friedman & Friedman, 2013; Poellhuber, & Anderson, 2011; Woodley & Meredith, 2012). The first social networking site was introduced to the public in 1997 and has grown exponentially over the years (Ahn, 2011). What was once a one-way communication tool is now multi-tiered system of communication between peers (DeAndrea, Ellison, LaRose, Steinfield, Fiore, 2012). Over the last 6 years, Facebook and Twitter have exploded in popularity demonstrating the growth in social media usage (Evans, 2014).
Young people today use social media as their main method of communication (Casey, 2013). “Most computer users – and adolescents in particular – engage in a broad range of computerized activities, including coursework for school, watching videos on Youtube, or playing first-person shooter video games” (Appel, 2012, p. 1340). Social networking sites offer an insightful opportunity to research and learn how young people interact with others in their online communities. (Ahn, 2011).
Affordances
People are constantly learning and seeking information to create solutions for problems in the workplace, home, school, or to just satisfy a curiosity; social media is the medium used to seek information and to share solutions (Dabbagh, & Kitsantas, 2012). Integrating social media into a problem-based learning approach makes for good pedagogical practice, “as the main interpretations of social media/web 2.0, highlight more social, student- centered, collaborative and production-oriented pedagogical strategies” (Buus, 2012, p.21). With the use of social media, teachers are able to facilitate learning (Powers, Alhussain, Averbeck, & Warner, 2012). When teachers use social media in their delivery of course content, they “force students to be self-starters” (Friedman & Friedman, 2013, p. 6) and they teach students about the importance of using social media to network and work collaboratively with others. It is with this networking and collaboration that students are able move from data collection to knowledge and understanding of content, based upon feedback from the greater, global, social network (Friedman & Friedman, 2013). In the past, students had to rely on the feedback of reluctant peers during class or “brown bag sessions and study groups for peer support and informal learning networks” (Dabbagh, & Kitsantas, 2012, p. 4). Today, with the surge in social media technological use, learning is no longer an activity that is done alone but rather the opportunity to connect with others and to ask questions and receive answers (Chen, & Bryer, 2012).
Social media is “moving education away from a knowledge-object orientation towards process- driven approaches – not what to know, but how to know” (Tay & Allen, 2011, p. 154). Online social media permits students to collaborate, which permits students to have conversations and get critical feedback from online peers who work together to meet common goals (Rambe, 2012). Students, with guidance from their teachers, are finding information, changing information into knowledge, sharing and getting feedback from peers (Powers, Alhussain, Averbeck, & Warner, 2012). Students are motivated to do well because they are sharing their work with their peers; knowing their peers will see their work motivates students to do better work (Liu, Liu, Chen, Lin, & Chen, 2011). When informal learning is taking place on social media sites, students get quality feedback allowing higher achieving students to do better and weaker students are able to get support and feedback which reduces the achievement gap between high achievers and lower achievers (Chen, B., & Bryer, T., 2012, p.98; Casey, 2013).