[Xmca-l] Re: Article for discussion: Facebook in Brazilian schools

[Glassman, Michael]

Mika and others,

Thanks for the link Andy. I remember reading that article last week and thinking that they just weren't getting it (maybe I'm not getting it though). This idea of these students and others who have grown up over the last quarter century being Zen social media gurus is simplistic and kind of ridiculous, especially in the light of the article that the students hadn't used Twitter very much before. And yet, you can't help thinking that something else is going on, that the students are able to use new mediating forces for what the authors call collaborative agency, although I am more comfortable with collective efficacy.  The question is why and why now. The outcomes are different. What is causing this combination of autonomy, relationships and competence. Certainly not any change we have made in schools. If anything concentration on STEM takes it the other direction. What is causing this change.

The students in the article used Facebook but why are they using this medium in this way. I don't believe it is the particular platforms. It's biggest attribute is free and easy access, but really they aren't any different than the online bulletin boards in many ways that started all this thirty years ago.  I have been talking with my students a lot about this lately (not because of Parkland, but that really brings it to the forefront). We have the beginnings of some ideas but I'm not ready to talk about them even half-baked yet.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2018 1:03 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Article for discussion: Facebook in Brazilian schools

Michael - I have been trying to find a digital copy of a story in today's NY Times titled "the social media warriors of parkland." For some reason it is not visible on the digital version.... yet. Maybe someone out there in xmca-land can find it for us? I will check again in the morning to see if it appears.
     It seems especially relevant to Monica and Fernando's article, and to David's comment that "  it is very hard for me to pinpoint any actual new form of thinking or new form of speaking which was made possible by Facebook."  The voices and forms of speaking used by the students was not, so far as I could tell, the source of data. There are no quotations of any students speaking differently. I assumed that this article was about collective action.
Monica and Fernando - I confess I had difficulty following parts of the article, perhaps because I am a very seldom user of Facebook. In particular, I had difficulty understanding Figure 3.  Were the people who started M1 also those who started M2-M3? ( " Once students achieved the object of the activity—in the first case, to avoid the closure of the schools—they focused the protests on another object").

Did the M4 people get the idea from M1 through a FB connection form M1? Did you get any sense of what distinguished pages that got a few hundred versus
10,000 reactions?

Harshad - Did you think the article failed to consider social issues? There is no information about you on the xmca membership page, so it is difficult to know from what part of the world you are writing. Unless I miss my guess, some people will wonder at your use of the word "man" where the local practice might put "humankind" or some other gender inclusive term.

David - Daylight saving time tonight so I find myself "working late."  It got me to wondering how many people live in Seoul. A lot, it turns out.
About 9-10 million. That got me to wondering about how much faster all those people would be getting around on horses with all the horse plops to clamber over. And all that hay to haul into town for the morning rush hour.  :-)

mike

On Sun, Mar 11, 2018 at 8:25 PM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> I'm sure those meddling kids won't come back on your lawn any time soon.
>
> But really, the article did not say Facebook is a new type of technology.
> I believe they said that it's a form of human-technology interaction 
> and suggested perhaps social media was a new type of human-technology 
> interaction.  I don't agree with this phrasing. I tend to think of 
> Facebook more as an application of Internet technology - but either 
> way Facebook is just a form or an application. Is the internetworking 
> of computer, radio and satellite communication an enormous step 
> forward in how humans communicate.  I think so - it's really 
> extraordinary on a number of levels but that's really not the conversation for this article.
>
> I do think the authors have done an analysis that is interesting and 
> possibly important, especially when one considers what is currently 
> going on down in Parkland (some might be happy to know that, at least 
> from what I have read, Facebook isn't dominant or even that important 
> for these students. Adults have been using it more for larger 
> organizational events like the March 14 walkout and the March 24 
> march).  I have read some articles on organizing on online forums (and 
> actually wrote a not very good one a few years back). Most of them are 
> communications based an don't have strong theoretical underpinning 
> which is why I think this article might be an important step forward.
>
> I think the idea of using third generation activity theory might be a 
> good idea for this type of analysis. I myself have seen ties between 
> the trialogical approach being developed by Hakkareinan and Paavola 
> and what is going on down in Parkland. The students are creating their 
> own projects and then getting the larger community to buy in to and 
> support what they are doing which is in turn changing the quality of 
> their activities. I have my own ideas on why this is suddenly 
> happening and direct communication technologies like Twitter and 
> texting (which seem primary vehicles) are only part of it.
>
> Anyway, this particular article I think is really timely and should 
> give us a lot to think about.
>
> Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@ 
> mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
> Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2018 6:03 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Article for discussion: Facebook in Brazilian 
> schools
>
> So in the fifteenth century, Gutenberg exapted extant technology 
> already widely available in China and published a single text using 
> moveable type which started a profound intellectual, cultural, and 
> social revolution whose effects we still feel today: the rise of 
> Protestantism, the Counter-Reformation in, among other places, Brazil, 
> the Wars of Religion in France, the vicissitudes of a 
> multii-confessional (political) State and ultimately those of a 
> multi-confessional (psychological) state, In the twentieth century, 
> Ford similarly exapted extant technology, this time nearly two 
> millenia later than China, and mass-produced automobiles using 
> Taylorism, forcing everybody to buy an identical product with interchangeable parts made by factories with interchangeable workers.
> The automobile "revolution" did not even give us new roads, and in 
> Seoul today traffic moves notably slower than it would on horseback. 
> Clearly, there are some forms of technology that are actually 
> semiogenic--and others which merely circulate capital at a faster rate 
> and actually slow the movement of people and new ideas.
>
> So my question is very simple. How do we know that "Facebook" (which 
> as the name implies was originally designed to help Harvard freshmen 
> decide which classmates were sufficiently hot to "like") is really one 
> of the former technologies?.There are very clear signs , beyond the 
> obvious ones surrounding the American origins, that it belongs to the 
> latter category, and not a few of them appear in this very article. 
> First of all, the authors are honest enough to associate Facebook with 
> reactionary, xenophobic, populist movements like the clowns who run the "Five Stars"
> movement in Italy. Second, on the very first page, the authors try but 
> do not really seem to be able to distinguish between the "post first 
> and organize later" technologies of Occupy Wall Street and the use of 
> social media by the four movements in the article (including one 
> actually called "Occupy Everything"). And thirdly, it is very hard for 
> me to pinpoint any actual new form of thinking or new form of speaking 
> which was made possible by Facebook. If anything, Facebook seems to 
> narrow semiogenic power to a single consumer/computer menu. Ford said, 
> you can get a Model A in any color you like so long as it's black. 
> Facebook tells us the same thing, but makes the verb "like" intransitive.
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> Recent Article in *Early Years*
>
> The question of questions: Hasan’s critiques, Vygotsky’s crises, and 
> the child’s first interrogatives <https://www.tandfonline.com/ 
> doi/full/10.1080/09575146.2018.1431874>
>
> Free e-print available at:
> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EeWMigjFARavQjDJjcW/full
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2018 at 7:30 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil 
> <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear xmca'ers,
> >
> >
> > it is (bit over) due time for introducing the article for discussion 
> > from MCA's 2018 Issue 1, before Issue 2 comes upon us soon.
> >
> >
> > The selected article, by Monica Ferreira Lemos and Fernando Rezende 
> > da Cunha Júnior, is about two topics that were thematised in the 
> > last ISCAR congress and that ought to be of much relevance to 
> > current and future CHAT-related research: Social media and social 
> > movements. In particular, the article examines how students use 
> > social media for the organization and development of 4 social movements in Brazil.
> >
> >
> > The article is attached and is Free access during the discussion period.
> > It can be accessed free in the following link:
> >
> > https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2017.1379823
> >
> >
> > The authors have kindly agreed to participate in the discussion and 
> > they will be introducing themselves soon. I hope you  will find the 
> > article interesting and please don't be shy to share anything you 
> > might have learned reading it, anything you might wonder about it or 
> > that you would like see discussed. Having authors engage in dialogue 
> > is a great opportunity that this community offers and that makes 
> > sense the most when many of you participate. Good reading!
> >
> > ?
> >
> > Alfredo Jornet
> >
> > New article in *Design Studies* "Imagning Design: Transitive and 
> > intransitive dimensions"
> > Free print available: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1WhHg_,KmyN6Dr
> >
>
>