This is another post that will likely be part of a series. I’m really enjoying using my blog for this part of the research process, as a tool to unpack my thoughts and consider the direction of my research. So, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere (I think), I’m interested in exploring social media as site of research into social movements and learning. This fits in nicely with my own work in relation to active citizenship, as I’m especially interested in social movements as a form of active citizenship, and it also fits into much of my teaching career, which was focused on exploring the ways technology might be used to improve learning. And I think there is a genuine gap in the research here – while there has been a great deal of recent research into social media and how it shapes political thought, discourse, and how people are using it, there has been less research into what it means in terms of learning about particular social movements.
It is this learning that is the main focus of this blog post, and I think there are two kinds of questions that are relevant here:
- What do we mean by learning in this space, and
- How might we measure that learning (assuming that it takes place)?
Both of these questions are wound up in matters related to activism, too, as fits nicely within my ideas about civics and citizenship, but also within ideas about learning in the 21st century. Now, I’m conscious that there are some contested ideas (about learning, really?) in theories like connectivism, but I think they do have some relevance here. And, of course, broader ideas about social movement learning and informal learning are relevant, too.
On the topic of learning, it might be worth thinking about what participants in the movement might be learning. So, by taking instagram as an example, I think that there are a couple of different ideas of what learning is taking place. There is learning about the issue that the movement is campaigning about: take, for example, Fridays4theFuture, the environmental social movement. By taking part in Instagram (either through retweeting or even reading posts from Greta Thunberg and other figures and organisations, that’s an example of learning – although it’s probably at quite a limited scale, and lends itself to uncritical acceptance of the facts as presented.
But what does this learning look like? An interesting case study might be the #Facetheproblem (?) campaign that I’ve seen recently. This required environmental activists (? – not sure this is the right word in this context) – or at least followers of the movement to take a selfie and put the words #Face on it. Is this learning? Well, in one sense, as it encourages a movement from passive consumption to a more active stance – something that would be familiar to critical pedagogues and experiential learners everywhere. But is this learning?
Lots to ponder here.