Learning in Niche Online Social Networks

• In Event: Designs for Learning and Practice

Abstract

Although popular accounts tend to portray youth-initiated media practices as deficient or deleterious to academic learning, linking them to a moral panic about declining standards of literacy (Thurlow, 2006), this paper argues that, on the contrary, issue-oriented online social networking applications provide powerful contexts for learning traditional and new literacy practices. Results of a mixed methods study highlighted the nature and development of young people’s reading, writing, and peer interactions within and beyond a content-rich, open source social networking application, designed and implemented within Facebook.com, to enhance knowledge-sharing about environmental science issues and action strategies.

Author

• Christine M. Greenhow, Michigan State University