be meant by the term ‘face,’ by extending the phenomenological and ethical philosophy
of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas’ conception of the face was drawn out of his
examination of human encounters in the same physical space. However, his description
of the self-other encounter as “the face to face,” stresses that the face of the other is not
simply a set of physical features that can be seen, but rather the means by which the
other reveals themselves to the self (1969, p. 79-81). This conception of face as a means
of revealing otherness suggests that is it possible to extend Levinas’ description of the
ethical self-other encounter into online spaces. Therefore, although it is certainly not
something that Levinas’ himself would have done, this paper employs the idea of the
Levinasian face in support of new ways to frame the potential of interactions in
Facebook as part of higher education learning programs.
Facebook and online communication
Online platforms have extended the idea of computer-mediated communication (CMC)
beyond the confines of text. They have radically increased the ease of communicating
with other people, both individually and as a group, using a combination of text, audio,
still images and videos across spatial and temporal divisions. The sharing of these
different media forms adds to the richness of online communication in ways that
support many possibilities for disseminating information, indicating emotional reactions
and revealing aspects of personality, personal history and experiential knowledge.
Although this is true of a number of online communication platforms, in terms of
current popularity and number of users, “Facebook has no effective imitators” other
than a few specific services such as “Weibo in China and VK in Russia” designed to
cater for particular differences in language, politics and culture (Allen, 2012, p. 214). The
use of Facebook to keep in contact with ‘friends’ (who may fall into a number of
categories such as acquaintances or work colleagues) is now a feature of many people’s
everyday lives. Facebook is primarily thought of as a space for maintaining social
connections with others, but different people take this to mean different things, whether
sharing aspects of their everyday life experience, publicising the causes in which they
feel most heavily invested, or sharing interesting or amusing things they have seen on
the Internet.
Most educators and students are insistent that their personal Facebook networks
should be carefully separated, since neither group really wants the other to see
everything that is posted to their Facebook timelines. In addition, it has been suggested
that some educators might be uncomfortable with the Facebook environment, because
it reduces the hierarchical separation between teacher and learner that is familiar from
the lecture theater environment (Allen, 2012). Nonetheless, the popularity of Facebook
and the regularity with which it is checked by its users suggests that this Social Network
Site (SNS) might be a good way of making and maintaining contact between students
and teachers, to share information through a platform that is becoming increasingly
familiar, and is considerably more flexible than institutional email systems or commonly
used institutional Learning Management Systems (LMSs), such as Blackboard or
Moodle.
Facebook friend networks and Facebook groups in education
Facebook’s popularity with both students and teachers in higher education is not
primarily driven by the use of this SNS as an educational environment; instead, it is
more commonly understood as a way of maintaining a personal network of family,
friends and acquaintances. Whether the people in this network are family members, or