I continue to think very hard about social media, and whether they truly have a place in education, now or in the future. I keep trying to be persuaded by all the arguments which seem to think they do, but I still can't convince myself.
I was very interested to read "The Enlightenment Meets Twitter" (Krutka & Milton, 2013). I have, for some time, followed several Twitter accounts such as "Real Time WW II Tweets", "Samuel Pepys", and so on. A couple of years ago, as the result of a residency ("In(ter)ventions: Literary Practice at the Edge") at the Banff Centre in their Literary Arts department, I almost embarked on a Twitter-based experimental literature/performance art project myself. (The basis of the idea was to tweet the entirely of "Don Quixote" exactly 140 characters at a time, and then to engage in a variety of "meta" practices around this "quixotic" endeavour. It never got off the ground, even though I'm still fascinated by the potential of the project.)
Most of these accounts are, in fact, some sort of "conceptual art" project. They not only produce tweets, but they interrogate Twitter as a medium. They themselves ask questions about Twitter, and implicitly invite followers to do the same. For example, the Samuel Pepys account is an exploration of transposing/transferring Pepys' famous diary entries into/onto the Twitter platform. Pepys was an incredible and inveterate diarist. Many of his diary entries were essentially 17th Century "tweets". In transposing his (anachronistic) diary entries into tweets, the project invites followers/readers to contemplate Twitter as the modern equivalent of a diary. The project does not "pretend to be Pepys". It does not answer questions in character. It simply posts diary entries as tweets, on the same day of the calendar as they were originally written.
I tremendously enjoy following the account--even occasionally retweeting some of the tweets, which can sometimes seem remarkably apropos across the centuries! But the account constantly reminds of what Twitter is. It is, and always will be, a microblogging platform. It is indeed in many ways the modern equivalent of the diary--nothing more, and nothing less.
Twitter CAN be an interesting platform to explore in various artistic ways--like the Pepys account. There have been many conceptual art projects which have explored and interrogated the medium. But I continue to struggle with attempts to make it into something it isn't by nature--to "use" it for a variety of purposes--"commercial", "educational", or otherwise. They all seem forced and contrived, and never fully successful.
The project described in "The Enlightenment Meets Twitter" is a case in point. While there is much that is laudable about the project, it ultimately fails, in my opinion. Having students adopt the "persona" of historical figures on Twitter is highly problematic to me. I suppose I can see some educational benefits to the students, but I have profound issues with making these accounts public--at least without some sort of clear indication on the accounts that they were indeed student projects. They raise fascinating issues about online identity construction, but they remain problematic to me.
What I actually find quite fascinating about social media is their curatorial nature. People cultivate and tend to their Twitter, Facebook, and especially Vine and Instragram accounts in an attempt to curate personal collections--virtual "cabinets of wonder". For an interesting discussion of this, see Alexandra Molotrow's recent article in in Globe and Mail.
Just a few days ago, columnist Andrew Coyne, who had been a heavy Twitter user, abruptly announced he was "quitting" Twitter and deleted his account. It made national news. Part of his reasoning was the "meanness" of Twitter, other social media, and the internet in general (such as "comments" sections, let alone the vile murk of various corners of Reddit and 4Chan). Utopian rhetoric about social media invariably ignores this profound reality. For every Arab Spring, there are countless FHRITPs. More and more people are doing just as Coyne has done, and quitting social media entirely, increasingly citing "Mean World Syndrome".
Social media are just that--media which exist for social interaction. No amount of wishful thinking can or will force these square pegs into roundish holes for which they were not designed, created, or intended. The world is littered with failed attempts to create "social media for the workplace" (Yammer, anyone?), "social media for education" (Edmodo?), and so on. They're always marketed as "Facebook for work", "Twitter for school", and so on. But they never really work. Facebook is for Facebook. Twitter is for Twitter. Blogs (even such as these) are for blogging--personal writing and expression, not academics. They're all "curated diaries" in an increasingly mean online world.
I have tried to "use" various social media for purposes for which they were never intended in my own education practice. These efforts have always been glorious failures, for precisely those structural reasons. The only true success I have had (thus far) is with blogs. I encourage/require my students to write personal thoughts, reflections, and observations on their blogs. I don't impose academic rules, regulations, or expectations. I just ask them to write, and to read and comment on each others' blogs. This works well, precisely because it uses the platform not only for something familiar, but for the purpose for which it was designed.
Reference: Krutka, D & Milton, M. (2013). The Enlightment Meets Twitter: Using Social Media in the Social Studies Classroom. Ohio Social Studies Review, vol. 50, #2, pp. 22-29. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/5231710/The_Enlightenment_meets_Twitter_Using_social_media_in_the_social_studies_classroom
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