The network approach to social media

THE NETWORK APPROACH TO SOCIAL MEDIA

"Social media comprises ICT, digital technologies, applications and e-services that have become central to everything we do and all that is happening through mobile phones, computers, digital TV, the Internet, etc. A social (r)evolution in itself, this “living web” allows people to co-construct and consume (or “auctor”, author + actor) information, knowledge and identities through editing, updating, remixing, refashioning, responding, sharing, tagging and so on. In order to do so, a minimum level of digital competence and literacy but also communicative skills is needed to lead to inclusion in our digital society and beyond.

Within the LS6 network we opted for the term “social media” since we will be focusing on the interactional, participatory, collaborative, learning- and identity-related dimensions of social networking technologies, all of them included in the renewal of the term "social". According to Michel Maffesoli, this term should be understood not in terms of utility, reason and labor, but in terms of “sociality”, including three essential parameters - the playful, the oneiric and the imaginary (le ludique, l’onirique et l’imaginaire).

For the LS6 network, social media is a genuine field of transition, evolution and exploration of boundaries between social networking tools, human activity and learning, namely language learning."

Fred Dervin, Katerina Zourou, March 2010.

A position paper on the network approach to social media for language learning will be released shortly.