The final aspect of the phenomenology of SNS use that we will here address has been
described as “ambient virtual co-presence” (Horst et al., 2007; Ito & Okabe, 2005b).
Through frequent SNS posts or SMS messages, often of little inherent or individual
interest or value, users are able to maintain a feeling of proximity and connection. Users
find value in knowing what others in their network are up to, even though what they are
up to may not be of any particular interest. This is partially connected to FOMO, but
extends further—through ambient virtual co-presence we gain a feeling of social
connection which extends beyond the mere alleviation of anxiety about possible social
disconnection. This virtual co-presence is significant enough an aspect of SNS use that
some prominent behaviours, e.g. sharing photographs of one’s lunch, can hardly be
made sense of unless it is understood that these forms of “sharing” are intended as
relational actions, not informational exchanges (Wittkower, 2012).
In ambient virtual co-presence, users obtain a feel for the texture of life of those in
their networks, and a background awareness of recent events in the lives of their
connections. Through these means, the user is virtually co-present along with others.
This is paralleled by a different form of ambient awareness, in which others are virtually
co-present along with the user. This form of ambient awareness, which we may call
“potential being-with,” is nothing but ambient virtual co-presence viewed from the
other end: the user, before sharing an anecdote about their day or a photograph of a
misused apostrophe, is of course aware of the ambient virtual co-presence that their
connections will experience, and so, when experiencing the to-be-shared experience,
experiences it as in prospective retroactive virtual community with others.
Taking virtual co-presence and potential being-with together—and considering that
we ideate virtual co-presence and potential being-with regarding communities, networks,
groups, and pages, as well as individual users—a complex picture of ambient awareness
emerges. SNS users, when fully trained in the habits of ambient awareness, carry their
networks around with them in constant potential retroactive virtual co-presence—users
experience everything around them as in principle sharable, thus, not only “alone
together” (Turkle, 2011), but (potentially virtually) together, even when “alone.”
Avenues of educational expropriation
With this incomplete phenomenology of consumer training on SNS in place, we are able
to consider some ways in which these skills, literacies, and habits may be expropriated
by educators. These considerations are intended to be suggestive and exploratory rather
than exhaustive and conclusive—these few examples are meant to illustrate and
exemplify how consumer training may be expropriated, not to identify universal or
preferred methods of doing so. We expect that the reader is likely to gain more by
considering how her own objectives and environment could be well served by alternate
forms of expropriation than by considering wholesale adoption of the assignments and
exercises here described.
We will begin with an in-depth example, describing an innovative process we have
already implemented that takes advantage of many of the identified forms of consumer
Rush
and
Wittkower
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training. Following this, we will consider a variety of other kinds of possible avenues of
expropriation. It should be emphasised that we wish to consider here ways in which
consumer training on SNS can be mobilised, which does not necessarily require actually
using SNS in course activities—although, of course, the use of SNS may often aid in the
transfer of relevant skills and habits.
In a course currently offered by one author of this paper, in which the other author
is an embedded librarian, we have implemented a modified version of an annotated
bibliography assignment. Students are to join a Facebook group, into which they post
links to material relevant to our course, accompanied by a 100-word annotation, in
which they present the linked material and discuss its relevance to course readings or
classroom discussion. Students receive course credit for each annotation, but also
receive additional credit if one of their classmates uses their post as a source in their
paper. It is explained to students that the intention of this additional credit is to
encourage them to find material that’s as relevant as possible, and to write annotations
which make the source as approachable and adaptable to coursework as possible. In this
way, a collaborative and collective resource is created, proving students having difficulty
thinking of paper topics with a rich set of peer-recommended areas of interest, and
allowing ‘clusters’ of research topics to emerge, as students share topics of interest to
them and influence their peers to begin to pay attention to and think about related
issues.
This process uses consumer-trained social informatics to curate crowdsourced
research materials. Students are able to have scalable and multiplex interactions: they
may set their privacy settings, picture, and even name so that they are more or less easily
recognisable in offline settings. We have seen students with previous offline
relationships like and comment on one anothers’ posts online, students choose to
conceal their identity online entirely and remain silent in class, and students who did not
previously know one another follow up in-person on online interactions—and
conversely, follow up on in-person conversations by online posting of annotated
bibliography sources. Though current research trends show that students prefer not to
mix their academic and social lives (Educause, 2013), our experience is that when given
the opportunity to use Facebook in place of Blackboard or a similar course management
system (CMS), students responded positively. Surveys indicated that our students found
that the use of the Facebook group for both the annotated bibliography assignment, and
for communicating with the professor and embedded librarian was either “very useful”
or “useful” in comparison to using Blackboard, and 92.3% of students did not have
concerns in regards to privacy, given that interaction took place only through group
membership and that students were encouraged to lock down privacy settings. The
general consensus among students was that they are already logged into Facebook for
much of the day, so it was convenient for them to post and check the class Facebook
group in lieu of logging into our university CMS.
In addition to drawing upon training in social informatics, interactions, and audience
and identity construction, this also provides the distinct microtransation incentive
structure of liking and sharing, in three ways. First, in a literal sense: even though the
student may not have any pre-existing or continuing relationship with their classmates, it
is safe to assume that when one of them likes, comments on, or shares a post, this
positive peer reinforcement is validating in the same sort of way as it would be within
recreational Facebook use among an intentional community of friends. Second, the
small scale of the assignment provides for a quick cycling and pervasive action-reward
cycle between student and instructor, allowing for a great many points of contact at a