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

Thu Mar 15 00:10:03 PDT 2018

I have a few questions for the authors, some profound, most
trivial ...

bottom four lines of p. 55
you mention the problem of goals and motives: "to construct
a connection between the goals of the students ... and the
objective activity systems . ... promotion of creative
encounters."
It was a lesson I learnt hard, that in organising a
movement, you have o make participation enjoyable.
Regrettably (he says) maybe even a majority of young people
participate in movements for other than the universal
motivation. Did you measure anything which could shed light
on how, if and how much FaceBook worked as an organising
tool in part because people like "playing" on it,
socialising, etc.?

You mention, e.g. p. 58, that participants in earlier
movements went on to participate in the later movement. You
draw from this (p. 61) that the movement went on to
"different objects". This touches on a problem I have which
comes up in other ways. Doesn't it suggest that *all* the
Movements were in reality pursuing the *same* object, and
the various issues which formed the focus on each of the 4
Movements were in a sense "proxies" or (to use a word you
use) *triggers* for action in pursuit of the same object.
Though we don't get to know what that might be, because you
don't ask the question. Near the bottom of p. 63 you refer
to "the emergence of new motives to maintain the social
movements" - again I question this emergence or what it was
which "emerged".

The pattern was (p. 61) that it began in a single school and
spread. It is clear enough that FaceBook was key to its
spread to other schools, but do you know whether in that
first school is was (a) a single student or two, who got
their own school organised by FaceBook, or a large group was
organised and already mobilised in that school, which then
decided to spread itself by FaceBook? Is face-to-face still
the most important organising mode, in other words?

You say that a FaceBook page is controlled by a few people
(the page administrators). Compared to what?? A printing
press? A telephone tree? A national newspaper? A chapter
committee? A professional lobby group with subscribers? And
in the last of the 4 they adopted a strategy of having a
central page for the whole movement, with school pages
linked. That is, in order to spread the movement they placed
the movement in the hands of even *fewer* people. So these
kids evidently did not think it regrettable that their
organising tools were in the hands of few people.

p. 63, and this is important. "The Four Movements ... were
triggered by a collective need." This is so wrong it's
almost a non sequitor. Of course, I know, it is straight
from A N Leontyev. But this is not 1970s USSR, and we can
get a better view of the dynamics of social change than ANL
could. It is a mistake to claim that the object of a project
is a *need*. It is true only  to the extent that it is a
tautology. And even of you want to say that the object of an
activity is a need, it is certainly *not* the "trigger."
Imagine if I said that the Second Wave Women's Movement was
"triggered" by the "need to fight against patriarchy" ...
which had been around for several thousand years. Page 64
you talk of "the emergence of a collective need." I insist,
granted there were human needs underneath all this, but it
was not the "need" which "emerged."

There are complex questions around what "triggers" a
movement and lots of people who would dearly like to better
understand this. "Need" is not the answer. The answer
includes the social position of the participants, events all
around, and semiotic considerations of all kinds and "needs"
which are at least "second order" needs. I would have liked
more attention to this problem.

You did not do anything with the widely varying number of
Likes on the various pages. Do the number of Likes
constitute a useful metric? I don't know. I wonder what it
correlated with? Also, in my experience an effective
organising page (1) provides what I call a "Honey Pot",
i.e., a point of attraction. Does this ring any bells? (2)
Offers the opportunity to comment or add images, etc. You
note that most of the content was provided by the page
admins. What did you notice about those pages which got more
added content?

I am interested in your responses Monica and Fernando.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 14/03/2018 6:02 AM, Fernando Cunha wrote:
> Dear all,
> I really appreciate the discussion so far, and I liked the way some of you used some metaphors. It was far from our intention to reinvent the wheel or to use flint stones to light fire. What I think it is important is that there is no "if" in human history, and we are where we are because we transform the places we live, as well as the tools we use. We can for sure ride horses in the cities, but the horses would sweat so much (considering the asphalt roads), that in a matter of hours they would die.
>
> Since life is forward, we tried to show in our article a small part of what the movements organized by the students were.It is important to highlight, that despite people that were not in favor of protests (including some students!), it was the first time in Brazilian history that students (who were not supposed to interfere) interfered in a political decision. And they did so not only by using Facebook. As we mention in our paper, Facebook is one aspect of the protests, and we considered it as a mediational communicative tool. As I mentioned before in this answer, we as human beings use tools that are available, reshape them, and sometimes use them for a purpose that is completely different from the original idea.
> I myself am a secondary education teacher, and I am also a researcher because I am a secondary education teacher. We may have different points of view when you research something as an outsider, and when you participate (not as an ethnographer), but as a subject of the group. In my humble opinion, we are still trying to conceptualize (and stabilize) things that move faster than we can handle as scientists, or to compare contexts that cannot be compared.
>   
> I am looking forward to your reactions.
> Best regards,
>
>
> __________________________Fernando R. Cunha Júnior, PhD.
>
> http://fernandorcjr.wordpress.com
>  
>
>     Em segunda-feira, 12 de março de 2018 21:05:34 BRT, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> escreveu:  
>  
>  Alfredo et al
>
> I read this message before reading the prior one. You are making the point
> I was trying to make regarding discussion of the paper.
> In our everyday lives we are experiencing a change in the wind (to use a
> metaphor that Dylan made famous at another such time).
> HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE DISRUPTING THINGS AS USUAL for the first time in
> my life. Call it 65 years.
>
> And we are academics and some of us are are paid to theorize such matters.
> To theorize the social organization of society was
> Hugh's description of the social sciences. In most American Universities,
> Psychology (cap P) is located in the social sciences.
> Do we approach the problem from "below" as psychologists? Do we approach it
> from "above" as sociologists and political scientists?
> Can you link the Leontiev who writes about the nature of human
> consciousness, psychologically speaking and conducts experiments in the
> laboratory that look for all the world like what goes on in my psychology
> department, AND as someone who can help understand the growth of social
> movements? This may also be a way to address and understanding of the
> overlap and variability in the ideas of Vygotsky and Friere.
>
> Monica and Fernando must be reeling from all the complicated English we are
> spewing. I look forward to the discussion.
>
> Still worrying about Figure 3! I know I need to be able to interpret it but
> I am doing a lousy job.
>
> mike
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 5:34 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for finding and sharing the link, Andy, and thanks Michael and Mike
>> for bringing the absolutely relevant connection to Parklands.
>>
>> There was not so long ago a discussion here as well as in a couple of
>> articles in MCA about how crises leading to development most often result
>> from quantitative increments that lead to qualitative leaps such that new
>> forms of organization emerge from previous ones. So, David, I don't see why
>> increments in the pace of circulation (e.g., of information) would not be
>> expected to bring with them changes in the organisation of the whole
>> economy system. I would not say that social media is just bringing a lot
>> more of the same, just as I would not a priori reject the possibility that
>> bringing a lot more of the same might not end up bringing new qualitative
>> forms of communicating. The observation that "like" is intransitive in
>> Facebook is interesting; but to me it needs to be put in its larger context
>> of use. And so, are we analysing Facebook as a grammar closed up in itself,
>> or as one more chain in a larger grammar of possible cooperation?
>>
>> I am myself concerned that Social Media like Facebook may be amplifying
>> dichotomical thinking beyond the innocuous and often way-to-verbose essays
>> we academics enjoy entertaining with much more complex verbal forms than
>> Facebook's intransitive "likes", only that the confrontations now seem to
>> be moving to family's dinner tables, quarrels among protesters in public
>> squares, or previously unheard of incarcerations for publishing tweets and
>> rap songs that critique the crown in a supposedly modern democracy like
>> Spain (e.g.: http://cadenaser.com/ser/2018/02/20/tribunales/1519135083_
>> 106543.html). But the article here discussed also shows that there are
>> forms of organization that these technologies are affording that may bring
>> more positive changes, like the case again in Spain of March 8th women's
>> strike, the extent of which no politician or journalist had anticipated and
>> which led the government to quickly adopt a much more equity-friendly
>> discourse than even the evening before (https://www.youtube.com/
>> watch?v=4_11iIELdfc). So, no, probably that one strike, or that one
>> social media that may have made it possible, won't change the system. But
>> they seem to incrementally add to something, don't they?
>>
>> Alfredo Jornet
>> ________________________________
>> New article in *Design Studies* "Imagining Design: Transitive and
>> intransitive dimensions"
>> Free print available: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1WhHg_,KmyN6Dr
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org>
>> Sent: 12 March 2018 06:39
>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Article for discussion: Facebook in Brazilian schools
>>
>> That headline does not exist, but is it this:
>>
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/us/parkland-students-social-media.html
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> ttp://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> On 12/03/2018 4:02 PM, mike cole wrote:
>>> 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
>>>>>
>>  