Levinasian faces in Facebook
While a profile picture may, or may not, disclose much information about someone,
posting and sharing content (in the form of text, images, music, videos, comments, likes,
etc) online, and responding through further posts, comments and likes, has the potential
to reveal many aspects of an individual’s personality. As Matthew Allen notes,
“[f]undamentally, Facebook is a system for communicating to others the interests,
passions, pleasures and business of the individual, ‘showing off’ the self” (2012, p. 216).
Facebook “gives users a way of offering themselves to others, to gain attention,” and
this broad understanding of personal disclosure through sharing content suggests the
potential of revealing a Levinasian face online, since it is through personal disclosure
that the other calls for an ethical response from the self (2012, p. 217). Although Allen
goes further to suggest that people can be “understood” through what they share on
Facebook, adopting a Levinasian perspective leads me to insist that what is revealed
through Facebook can only support a partial understanding (2012, p. 217). In addition,
while the system facilitates an “easy reciprocity in the giving of attention,” most notably
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through the ability to ‘Like’ a post or comment, there is nonetheless always a choice
over whether to reciprocate on Facebook (2012, p. 217). Ideas of partial connection and
comprehension, alongside the potential for communication that is not reciprocated, may
offer a more pragmatic understanding of what occurs in Facebook groups made up in
most cases of loosely connected people that may remain more clearly categorised as
‘strangers’ to one another as opposed to ever reaching the status of Facebook ‘friends’.
Facebook works well as an online environment to support meaningful encounters
between people because of the relative ease of sharing and viewing rich media through
its interface in comparison with, for example, Blackboard discussion boards. Most users
are now very familiar with the technological aspects of Facebook, such that the
underlying technology has become less and less noticeable. This is true not only of
Facebook’s web interface, but also the smartphone and tablet apps for the platform.
The majority of users find all of these interfaces so familiar and easy to use that sharing
resources is a simple task, from the perspective of the person posting and also of the
reader/viewer. As Clay Shirky notes, “[c]ommunication tools don’t get socially
interesting until they get technically boring” (2008, p. 105). Facebook groups can
therefore be favorably compared with the less sophisticated discussion board and
bulletin board interfaces that are commonly found in institutional LMS environments
such as Blackboard. In Facebook, the sharing of words, images, videos and other
information takes place in an environment where people are more able to concentrate
on the content itself, and the potential meanings it conveys, as opposed to the technical
difficulties of sharing or viewing content. It is easy to reply with a ‘Like,’ a comment, or
even a relevant rich media response of one’s own, and such sharing is made flexible,
‘anyplace, anytime,’ through the use of mobile devices. By allowing people to focus on
the content shared through the links between people, as opposed to the network as a
technology, Facebook is therefore more likely to support the revelation of a Levinasian
face than the more technically challenging LMS interfaces.
From this perspective, “[t]he principal feature of Facebook, therefore, is not within the
system so to speak, nor even determined by its use: the principal feature is each user and
how they come to be known” through the content that they post (Allen, 2012, p. 216).
Facebook can be understood to draw together the idea of the network technology and
the human subjects interacting through that network so closely that the human
“entanglement with media on a sociocultural and biological level” suggests that “media
cannot be fully externalized from subjects” (Kember & Zylinksa, 2012, p. 1). This
reinforces the idea that it is the on-going interactions that are recorded, through what is
shared, liked and the comments made, that are more important than the underlying
structure of connections between users (whether they are ‘friends,’ or members of the
same group). Indeed, the underlying membership structure of a Facebook group can be
quickly forgotten, along with the people that withdraw from the group completely or
lurk and only read and view content; instead, the group becomes more clearly identified
with those who are the most active, who post, like and comment on a regular basis.
These active group members are identifiable not only from their Facebook profile
images, but also by the tone of their comments, and the details of the multimedia
content that they share. These are the people whose interactions with the group most
clearly demonstrate the revelation of a Levinasian face—a face that is not physical, but
rather a revelation of being—online.
Sandry
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Taking responsibility for learning and sharing personal perspectives
From early analysis of closed Facebook groups used in 2013 for two separate iterations
of a Web Media unit at Curtin University, it can be seen that a number of students not
only comment on material posted by the lecturer, but also ask questions and share their
own source materials and examples through the Facebook groups. Although this shared
content is light-hearted at times, it is also sometimes serious, for example legal or policyrelated
material, and is always relevant to the concerns of the unit as a whole. In a more
structured situation, Murat Kayri and Öslem Çakir describe how the introduction of a
Facebook group enabled learning to be “shaped by the students,” such that they even
developed their own “lesson materials” (2010, p. 56). A closed Facebook group is
therefore of practical use, because it offers a “coherent space for collective interaction”
related to a specific context that can remain separate from “the individuated behaviour”
more generally presented through a profile, timeline and information shared on the
newsfeed with friends (Allen, 2012, p. 215). In spite of this separation, it is important to
stress that students may feel more comfortable sharing their personal ideas and opinions
in a Facebook group than in, for example, Blackboard, because Facebook is perceived
as a less formal space than a traditional LMS. Indeed, by sharing their own experiences
in relation to various platforms and media in the unit’s Facebook group, Curtin Web
Media students were better able to grasp the implications of differences in access to
media between city dwellers and those living in small country towns.
Sharing, in the context of a closed Facebook group, allows individual students to
explore aspects of themselves and others in relation to the group’s subject matter. They
are able to post what they are most interested in, and see how this compares with the
thoughts of others. Since the people brought together in a Facebook group are not
necessarily Facebook friends there is an increased likelihood that the unfamiliar
experience and history of others in the group may highlight very different perspectives
about the course or unit content. As people share views, opinions and examples that
particularly appeal to them, their interactions with the group are also likely to help them
situate their existing knowledge and experience in relation to what they are learning. As
Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska suggest, people and the media that they share,
comment upon and like in Facebook are co-constituted (2012, p.164). This perspective
highlights not only that people reveal themselves through what they post on Facebook,
but also that their self-understanding may change as a result of reading the posts of
others. Through the more personal nature of posts in the Facebook group, as opposed
to an LMS, students are drawn into proximity. They have an increased opportunity to
encounter the other’s ideas and experiences in ways that resonate with Levinas’
conception of “the face to face” (1969, p. 79-81). Although an LMS discussion board
may have the capability to foster this level of response, if presented and managed by
teachers as somewhere that welcomes personal as well as more formal reading and
research-related posts, the lack of ease and immediacy of posting is likely to reduce the
dynamic nature of the revelation-response interaction. In addition, the LMS is often
perceived as a space in which a teacher-student hierarchy is clearly maintained, and
sometimes even reinforced when the system overtly marks teachers’ posts as from
controllers, coordinators or lecturers.
Asymmetry and sharing in Facebook
There is often a clear asymmetry between students and teachers; one that is emphasised
in spaces such as lecture theatres, and, as I have just mentioned, also in LMSs. As Suler
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notes, “[a]uthority figures express their status and power in their dress, body language,
and in the trappings of their environmental settings” (2004, p. 324). This is true of the
lecturer who may choose to dress more smartly when presenting, and is often required
to take centre stage because of the physical arrangement of the lecture theatre as a
space. However, this display of authority can be lessened in tutorial rooms, where a
careful choice of seating layout, use of less formal language, and taking time to ensure
inclusivity can be used to break down the asymmetry somewhat. It has been argued that
online environments can reduce the perception of authority and thus the feeling of
asymmetry, making an interaction feel “more like a peer relationship” (Suler, 2004, p.
324). Although the identity of the lecturer or tutor is often known in Facebook, it is not
so overtly stated as in an LMS. In additi