O, brave new world that has such people in't

The recent revelations about the ‘roast busters’ Facebook group has once again brought the focus of attention onto social media. The outrage over the existence of this site is justified. Sites dedicated to videos of the rape, naming and shaming of young girls who have been stupefied with alcohol are abhorrent, and an example of society at its very worst. If media reports are to be believed, the site apparently was set up (by teenage boys who happily reveal their faces to their camera) almost two years ago, and police have been aware of it for some time. And yet nothing was done.

The facts of this case have yet to be determined. Considering the complexities of the networked world, and the nature of the charges, some facts may never be revealed. However, in this case, as in others reported on in the international press, digital and social media play central roles. When I was 13 or 14, a video camera was a rare and expensive item. The video produced could be viewed on a television, but sharing or copying it required access to several VCRs and technical knowledge that wasn’t widely available. In addition, it took time… copying a 1-hour video took at least an hour, valuable time for cooling down and reflecting on the potential risks and dangers of sharing whatever it was that had been recorded.

Things are different today. Even the cheapest and nastiest mobile phone contains a decent camera. Copying and (global) sharing of the videos made on the phone happens at the push of a button. Within hours, millions of people may have watched, shared, ‘liked’ and commented on your video. By the time uploader’s remorse sets in, your video or picture of yourself doing something foolish is well and truly out of the bag. To make things worse, sites such as Facebook allow for facial recognition and automatic tagging. If you are not careful you can find yourself ‘tagged’ and identified in the background of someone else’s crime or idiocy. 

We know that social media feeds into a primal adolescent need to be liked, to belong. Friends without Benefits, a must-read article in the September 2013 edition of Vanity Fair, paints a depressing view of the impact of Facebook and Twitter on teenagers. It describes "...a world where boys are taught they have the right to expect everything from social submission to outright sex from their female peers"; quotes teenagers who admit that social media is destroying their lives, but they feel they would have no life without it; and reveals a world where the measure of one's worth is the number of 'likes' your latest Facebook post receives. However, conventional media also has a lot to answer for. Rumours, gossip, and naming and shaming are great ways to sell newspapers or drive traffic to a website. Radio DJs on stations targeting youth share revel in salacious tidbits of information about drunk actresses or the latest celebrity sex tape. They celebrate their own drunken binges. One New Zealand station even hosts a popular weekly feature called ‘drunk girl trivia’ (Did you stop to check that the selected drunk girl you interviewed and broadcast on national radio got home safely, Dave? Did you contact her when she was sober to make sure she was still happy to have her drunken maunderings broadcast to the world?)  Is it any surprise that we live in a society that coins terms like ‘roast busting’ when the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour have become so blurred? Teenagers are not known for their wisdom and good judgement, yet we provide them with instant access to the world, and simultaneously replace the safety nets of centuries of social norms and moral development with the self-serving, anything-goes world of celebrity and social media. And we offer them no help in managing their way.

None of this is meant to imply that the accused in this particular case should be excused – from all reports, they have coldly, premeditatedly and repeatedly uploaded rape videos. But it does beg the question, in this hugely connected world, why did it take so long for the site to be discovered? I find it hard to believe that only the alleged rapists and the victims knew of the existence of the site.  How is it that no one else said that it was not ok for 13-year olds to be supplied with enough alcohol to render them senseless? Not only were the police apparently disinterested, but where were the friends who must have known about it but who said nothing? What world are we living in where no one other than the victims (for whom reporting would be the hardest) object; not only to this site but to the types of behaviours that lead to its existence? 

The cat is out of the bag. The online world is intimately woven into our daily lives, and whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or some-yet-to-be-created fad, the issues that accompany ubiquitous connectedness are here to stay. Social media has many positive elements, but it has also irrevocably changed the rules of society (see this article, about funeral selfies). We need our role models to show how to use these tools positively. Miley Cyrus’ [or insert celeb du jour name here] endless stream of ‘selfies’ contributes to the positive development of her bank balance. Apart from that, it suggests to her audience of naïve young teenage wannabees that it’s ok to share pictures of your [drunken binge/vomiting/drugging/snogging/etc.] with the world. Sadly, it isn't. And sites like ‘roast busters’ proves it. The world is not a safe place.

We must find ways to model appropriate behaviour in this new context in a way that makes it attractive and appealing for our youth. The alternative, I fear, will make Lord of the Flies pale by comparison.

Update: 8 November
Last night, Campbell Live aired an interview about 'roasting' in general, and the site in particular. Two teenagers spoke in terrifyingly matter-of-fact tones about their knowledge of the goings-on, including apparently witnessing incidents, and being invited to participate. The biggest issue for them, it would seem, was not that 'roasting' happens, but that it shouldn't be boasted about on Facebook. At no point did it occur to them that stupefying and rape are crimes, and that they should do something about it. 

Visual storytelling

Towards the end of last year, Massey University held its annual Vice-Chancellor's Symposium, focusing on the theme of defining 21st century scholarship. As part of the symposium, delegates were invited to submit posters reflecting one or other aspect of that theme. As my 11 avid readers will know, I am particularly interested in social media and the impact that has on modern life, so it seemed apt to explore how social media defines, or has the potential to define, the modern student. (At the time of designing the poster, Facebook announced the creation of its billionth account! There is no denying the pervasiveness of social media!) Because I was examining the potential impact of social media, it seemed appropriate to present my information in the form of an infographic. And whilst I made this choice more-or-less on a whim, designing the poster was the start of an interesting exploration of how the infographic (or my version of the genre, at least) allows one to present a great deal more information than simply words alone.

[1]

At the time, I was rather pleased with the way the poster turned out, although looking at it now I can see that there are some issues with it. Never-the-less, using the infographic format allowed me to mix data, in the form of charts, quotes from the literature, and imagery (cogs to reflect the connectivist nature of social media; the wave to warn of the risk of drowning in it) in a way which I think probably told a better story than the words alone would have done. 

Soon after the symposium, I was asked by a colleague to help her with a poster for a conference, and incorporating infographic elements worked well for that too.

I really became convinced of the usefulness of combining images and text  this year. I am currently working towards an MEd., and have to complete some initial papers before I get stuck into a thesis. One assignment required me to draw up a table comparing different groups of learning theories. I found the task a frustrating one, as the table format implies that there are clear boundaries between the theories, which of course, there aren't, and that the theories evolved in some sort of orderly process. Limited also by time and word count, I decided that the only way I could effectively present the information was to resort to incorporating infographic elements into the task.

This was my final product:

The content of the infographic was more or less determined by the assignment, but including visual elements certainly provided me with more scope for description. The three head silhouettes attempt to show the differences in the ways each group of theories explains learning. The associationists see it as a process of fitting new knowledge onto existing constructs, so lego seemed like an appropriate image. The cognitivists focus on the processes of information storage and retrieval, and the scripts and processes used by the brain to do this, hence the use of computer and other technological images. Situative theorists see knowledge as social constructs, so the images used there all reflect collaborative human elements.

By arranging the individual theories at different levels on the page, I was able to indicate the chronological progression without suggesting that these thing were truly sequential, and I used the circular watermarks to indicate the overlaps between the theories. Finally, the small icons next to each learning theory attempted to summarise the specifics of the theory in a way that could aid understanding and recall.

Using the infographic format in an academic context had great value for me and helped transform a fairly mundane task into a challenging and useful learning experience. Of course, I was fortunate to have a lecturer who was willing to allow the idea. And this is one of the big challenges of academia: so much of it is rooted in the tradition of words (a lecturer many years ago described the cult of publication to me as 'shedding pseudo light on non-problems). Publication must be in specific peer-reviewed journals for it to hold any value (although recent events have brought the value of peer review into question). Blogging and other forms of social media hold little weight in the world of higher education, and yet I doubt there is any better way of disseminating knowledge to the masses than through the use of blogs, tweets and other forms of social media, such as the infographic. Engaging with these less-erudite and arcane forms of communication, might enable academics to re-connect with the common man (or woman) who, through taxes and fees, probably fund a fair chunk of the university anyway. And if information is going to be valuable and useful, surely it needs to be as accessible and widely disseminated as possible?

[1] Hoare, K. (2012). Personal tutor- evaluation of a student support system - preliminary findings. ANZAHPE Conference 

Social media: friend or unfriend?

Picking through the social media garbage*

I have been a user of various forms of social media for a while now. I have a Facebook account which I use exclusively for social interactions with friends; this blog, and Twitter and Scoopit accounts, which I use for professional networking, reflection and resource sharing, and of course, a LinkedIn account, which, although I tend to neglect it, has brought me three unsolicited (but genuine) job offers in the last three years. I also have various other accounts, usually set up as part of my work in e-learning, so that I can get a feel for what they look like and how they could be used by students and teachers/lecturers; most of these are barren and neglected.

Social-media-savvy readers will have realised, no doubt, that I am no social-media guru. Anyone claiming to have real social media credit has thousands of Twitter followers... at last count I had fewer than one hundred, and, according to the Twitter stats, I send 0.95 tweets a day. I fear even the (soon to be ex-) pope tweeted more frequently. Despite this, I have found social media, especially Twitter, really useful. I use Tweetdeck to organise my Twitter stream, and tend to dip in once or twice a day, skimming through the feeds looking for articles of interest. (I suppose that means that I am really using Twitter as a content curation tool.) And I usually find at least two or three articles or links that are interesting and offer new ideas on things related to my work in education. In the last few months, however, this strategy of looking for gems whilst sifting through the screeds of inane comments on topics ranging from new clothes to the quality of coffee from someone's local coffee bar has made me feel like the garbage picker in the picture, sorting through the waste of society  and yet wearing an Armani cap. There are treasures to be found, but the air stinks.

Two recent events in particular have forced me to take a step back from Twitter in particular. The first was the Sandy Hook massacre. A few days after it took place, someone had the bright idea of using Twitter to encourage people around the world to wear green in memory of the children and teachers who were killed. Whilst this idea may have originated from the best of intentions, it rapidly devolved to people tweeting photographs of themselves in their Sandy Hook massacre memorial outfits posing flirtatiously for a 'selfie'... surely the pinnacle of narcissistic opportunism and bad taste. More recently, Oscar Pistorius' killing of Reeva Steenkamp has swamped the social media channels. It seems that anyone with access to social media is now an expert on everything from law and domestic violence to human behaviour and ballistics. Again, an appalling tragedy is reduced to an opportunity for intellectual masturbation, with little regard for the people killed in, or living through, the tragedy.

On a less outraged note, there is something about Twitter that seems to bring out the worst in people. Perhaps, by its very nature, it attracts the solipsist. I can't help but wonder who in the world would be interested in me posting a 'selfie' every day for a year. I'm just not that interesting to look at. And of the small group of people who follow my Twitter feed, perhaps two would be mildly interested to note that I have had a new haircut, or that the girl at the coffee shop short-changed me yesterday and then seemed surprised when I asked for the difference. Do I really need to inflict the minutiae of my existence on the other 96 followers who are unlikely to give a damn? Unless you are a member of my immediate family, I'm afraid I'm just not interested in the music you are listening to at the moment, how often you have 'checked-in' to a particular restaurant, the state of your latest diet or fitness regime, or the retweet of a compliment given to you by a colleague (retweeting stuff like that is just boastful.). The recent downfall of popular icons such as Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and now possibly Pistorius, should be sufficient warning to all of us of the dangers of cults of personality and yet social media allows us to create these cults for ourselves, easily and with little or no real foundation. This article from The Guardian sums up perfectly this strange brave new world.

And yet, despite all this, I can't disconnect from social media, or dismiss it completely. It has given me access to ideas, articles and research that I would never otherwise have known about. I've seen the value of Facebook as a tool for peer-to-peer learning, and have used Twitter to get answers to work-related questions from around the world. I curate and share resources daily using Scoopit, and many of these resources I find via Twitter. There is clear evidence pointing to the benefits of using social media in higher education, and statistics certainly point to the vast numbers of people for whom social media (especially Facebook, with 1 billion accounts and rising) is an integral part of daily life. 

So what is the answer? It seems unlikely that social media use will decline significantly, although of course the tools may change. It is imperative then, that social rules and ethics catch up with these new tools. Teachers and lecturers play a critical part in this. In as much as at school we teach children to read and write, we need to teach them to be ethical and social-media savvy. In higher education, we need to be going further: social media use should be an academic skill, and students need to be taught to think critically about the use of social media in the same way as they are taught to think critically about their core subjects. If we don't, I fear we are no better than the ancient Romans at the Colosseum, giving, on a whim, the thumbs up or down to the victims of the day.

*Image CC-By-NC-ND Grant Eaton
Ohhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/granteaton/6998651977/sizes/n/in/photostream/

Explaining social media

What more can one say, really...?



Social Media Explained a la @ThreeShipsMedia http://instagr.am/p/nm695/

By: Doug Ray

Getting networked!

I am one of those people who haven't really been inspired by LinkedIn. Quite frankly, keeping up to date on my blog is challenging enough, never mind maintaining  Fb and Twitter accounts! LinkedIn really has fallen by the wayside for me. However, by pure coincidence, I think getting into Twitter has solved my problem! I have discovered that Tweetdeck allows me to consolidate my Twitter, Fb and LinkedIn accounts in one place. Whohoo. No doubt I'm the last person on the planet to figure this out, but I got there in the end. So over the next few weeks, I'll pay more attention to LinkedIn. Hopefully those people (including my Canadian cousin, whom I last saw in 1987) who I see tried to link to me and whom I have so rudely ignored, will forgive me!

Twitter in itself has been interesting. Joyce Seitzinger, e-learning guru at EIT (@catspyjamasnz ) sung its praises at e-fest last year, and so I made an attempt to understand it, but I just didn't 'get it'. Too much trivia. So I closed my Twitter account and remained terribly superior and disengaged. Now, partly as a result of the FOC 2010 course (thanks, Sarah), and partly as a result of David Hopkins (@hopkinsdavid), who proclaimed that using Twitter was like sitting next to the smart kid in class, I'm having another go (@jeanjacoby). And I'm finding it remarkably different. There seems to be much less of the info-babble, and a lot more useful information. Has Twitter changed, or am I just getting better at picking people to follow? I've had some good guidance from the FOC course, and from Donna Thompson (@donnathompson) at UCOL, so it might be the latter...I'm not sure. I'd love to hear from established Tweeters... has Twitter become more useful?

Citizens as Gatekeepers

I heard Dr Luke Goode from Auckland uni on the radio this morning, discussing his recent contribution to the university's Winter Lecture series. His comments on the pros and cons of 'outsourcing' news to anyone who can connect to social media are really interesting. What caught my attention was his comments on social media heavyweights such as Twitter and Facebook, (and Google) and how our assumption that these apps democratise information is naiive to say the least. He bases this on the fact (one that I have never thought about before) that any online app is governed by the algorithms they run on, and these algorithms are created by people, all of whom have individual biases. Thus, all of these algorithms are designed to sift information in particular ways.

It seems that the sooner we acknowledge that the online environment is not a 'neutral gateway to information', the better we will become at managing it.

Of course, this raises another, (but not new) issue, of where the power will lie in the future: it seems more and more likely that it will be in the hands of the intellectual technocrati who know how to use social media most effectively. Should we be embedding social media skills into school curricula as urgently as the current push to embed literacy and numeracy? What do you think?

The transcript of Dr Goode's lecture is available here.

Why should we care about social media?

(Best watched with audio muted!)

Social networking

Another infographic this one by Jess3...

I was surprised to see that Skype is so much bigger than Facebook. People certainly are connecting.

Words, words, words

David Hopkins (Don't waste your time) blogged about this today. I would have called it a useful diagram, but thankfully, now I know that it's actually an infographic I won't embarrass myself in public! Although I haven't really caught the social media wave, I do think a lot of the tools have similar applications for those of us in education.

According to the CMO website "Infographics help communicate information in a digestible manner, as they creatively present data in an understandable and engaging format." I think we used to say, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'! 

If you're interested in social media, you can download a large pdf of this poster (oops, infographic) at the bottom of the CMO website.