Despite the current prominence of social–psychological
and connectivist theories, disagreement and divisiveness
are just as significant to learning as connection. In
fact, the consistent pattern of suppressing division,
negativity, and interpersonal dissent that is central to the
business model of social networking services runs
counter to other (non-connectivist) models and recommendations
for online student interaction and engagement
that have their foundations in education
philosophy. Contemporary online examples include
constructivist models of collaborative knowledge building
(e.g., Scardamalia & Bereiter 2006), communitarian
models of collaborative inquiry (e.g. Garrison 2005),
10 N. Friesen & S. Lowe
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
and commonplace advice asking students to critically
compare and contrast differing views and experiences.
Opportunities for social selectivity, discretion, privacy,
and detachment are important preconditions for the acts
of disclosure and mutual critique, falsification, and validation
that are central to these models. Interaction, in
these models (and in the technologies used to support
them), unfolds in ways that support much more nuanced
expressions of agreement, consent, or difference than
what is possible using designations such as ‘like’,
‘digg’, or even ‘dislike’ or ‘unfriend’. Such selectivity
and discretion are rendered structurally impossible in
convivial, commercially contoured environments like
Facebook or Twitter. These services, by design, clearly
serve interests and priorities other than (and in many
cases opposed to) those of learning. If anything, they
represent a new way of selling viewers to advertisers,
rather than a ‘2.0’ version of social or connective
learning or education. Knowledge is not exclusively
embodied in ever-growing networks of connection and
affiliation and it does not just occur through building
and traversing these proliferating nodes and links. Education
is clearly a social process but it is probably much
closer to an ongoing discussion or debate than an
extended celebration with an ever-expanding network
of friends.
While they have made no promises of suitability for
educational purposes, commercial social media are
influencing models of online learning (e.g. Downes
2006; Selwyn 2008; Anderson 2007). Key features of
social networking, which are widely ‘liked’, indicate
how crucial components of learning can be barred from
occurring. The wholesale adoption of these platforms
would threaten educational dialogue as a process that is
central to collaborative learning. The sequence, rhythm,
and flow functions of commercial social media present,
to use Raymond Williams phrasing, ‘a formula of communication,
an intrinsic setting of priorities’ (Williams
1974, p. 66). The difference separating these priorities
(in new social technology) from those of education is
clear in the form of social networks, if not also in some
aspects of its content. It remains to be seen whether the
cultural form of commercial social networking services
will be fully unsupportive of educational ends as commercial
television has long been and whether websites
of the future, as they are not ahistorical, will be embedded
with conventions, designs, and decisions that have
been established by Facebook’s ‘like’ of conviviality.