Research Paper on Social Networking: Research Paper on Social Networking
by
Alessandro Cecconi
EDD 8012 CRN 200820
Management and Evaluation of
Instructional Technology and Distance Education Programs
Nova Southeastern University
December 17, 2007
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Definition
The term “social networking” does not exclusively belong to digital technology on the
Web. On the contrary, social networks had been studied from the beginning of 20th century
with the aim to comprehend how the members of a certain community interact and which
mechanism can determine the interaction itself.
Today social networking commonly refers to all those activities that are carried out
within specific online services that provides free space and software tools which allow to
create networks of people. In other words, a social networking service is a Web site that
allows individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile.
The mechanism is the following: social networking services enable users to create a
profile for themselves, by inserting their personal data.
Users’ data are not only constituted by vital statistics, but they include a lot of other
information which pertains to user hobbies, passions, interests, professional background and
so on. This kind of personal data, all spontaneously provided by the user her/himself, permit
to create interconnected networks of people who decide to put in common their interests and
to have an online identity which fully describes them.
The great strength of social networking are the multiple ways the users have to
interact. Below is a list of the main communication resources used to build social networks:
chat;
messaging;
wiki;
email;
video;
voice;
chat;
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file sharing;
blogging;
discussion groups.
Brief History
All the technologies listed above are not new to the Web users who had been surfing
the Web during the last ten years, but today we label “social networking sites” those which
“reinvented” these technologies in commercial and non-commercial ways.
Early social networking sites, like Classmates.com (used to find, connect and keep in
touch with old school friends), go back to 1995, while recent phenomenon, such as Facebook
and MySpace, go back to 2003.
In the figure that follows there is a timeline (it starts from 1997) where it is possible to
note the increasing number of social networking sites during the last four/five years. It will be
useful to remind that not all these Web sites constitutes “real” new service, but in many cases
they are only a marketing strategy adopted to re-launch certain brands.
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Figure 1. Timeline of the launch dates of many major SNSs and dates when
community sites re-launched with SNS features
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Context
It is not possible to describe social networking without considering the current status
of the Web, which is commonly defined “2.0”. The biggest innovation in Web 2.0 is the
possibility for users to directly and easily create contents, even if they do not possess
technical skills. This content production is continuous and the social networking sites that are
seeing strong growth are continually refreshed by user generated content.
In particular, all the software tools that deal with digital communities are available for
free and are very easy to use; as a consequence, every user can add or modify contents,
search for existing ones and be part of a large number of communities. Everyone can be an
author.
Below are some data that summarize the growth of social networking service and
their general relevance. In the table are listed ten social networking sites; for each site are
indicated in column the millions of unique visitors for April 2005 and April 2006, and the
year over year growth percentage.
The same data are visually represented in the other chart.
Site
MySpace
Apr-05 UA (000)
Apr-06 UA (000)
YOY Growth
8,21
38,359
367%
Blogger
10,301
18,508
80%
Classmates Online
11,672
12,865
10%
N/A
12,505
N/A
MSN Groups
12,352
10,57
-14%
AOL Hometown
11,236
9,59
-15%
Yahoo! Groups
8,262
9,165
11%
MSN Spaces
1,857
7,165
286%
Six Apart TypePad
5,065
6,711
32%
Xanga.com
5,202
6,631
27%
YouTube
Figure 2. Nielsen Top 10 Social Networking Sites
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Figure 3. Nielsen/NetRatings Top 10 Social Networking Sites chart
From the charts above it is possible to say that social networking is certainly a
relevant element in our digital lives, giving to all users the opportunity to keep in contact with
a large number of different communities by subscribing to specific services that offers
specialized platforms for video, blog, photos, etc.
Applications for ITDE
Social networking represents a big resource for e-learning, because of its big impact
on the World Wide Web. In fact, the social networking online services implemented a new
model of knowledge management, totally based upon the worldwide voluntary contribution
of users. But to what extent is social networking powerful for distance education?
It is very interesting to point out that the average age of social networking users is
strongly and quickly decreasing; the new generations seem to be extremely familiar with this
kind of approach to the Web. According to a January 2007 survey by the Pew Internet &
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American Life Project, 55 percent of teens (ages 12 to 17) report having created a personal
profile online, and an equal number regularly use social networking sites such as MySpace or
Facebook. Of those, 91 percent use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently.
With all that screen time, students are acutely attuned to - and sometimes more comfortable
with - living in the digital world.
Thus, it follows that their teaming should become more digital, say proponent of
social networking in distance education. For these reasons, social networking is a big
resource for ITDE designing and developing and it could become the “trojan horse” to
ameliorate the effectiveness of distance education programs.
Lot of ITDE professionals started to base their design work upon the fact that users
(or learners?) become the main protagonists of their potential lifelong knowledge acquisition
experience through social networking experiences they live everyday and very naturally.
Thereby, if every user access to digital information not using “traditional” portals but
“opening” the Web from her/his personal digital landscape, it is quite obvious that any
education program should consider how it will impact on the preexistent knowledge system
of the learners. In fact, interrelated knowledge systems not only contribute to expand the Web
but also to “describe” and “define” the various contents the Web is made of.
Through social tagging, members of a community define links between resources
(sites, images, videos, audios, etc.) together with the terms used to describe them (tags). This
is a bottom-up process, which starts with a single user adding a link to a site and tagging it,
using keywords which are meaningful to the user. Social tagging can play a crucial rule when
digital learning objects’ and materials’ repository are created and maintained in an online elearning platform.
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Many of the innovative “social software” is crucial in supporting learning and
knowledge processes because they provide the opportunity to develop shared knowledge
construction, meta-cognitive reflection and knowledge production.
That is why social networking is bringing distance education to a collaborative
learning model which could not “erase” the digital behavior of the learner but draw
advantage from a sharing attitude of knowledge that is very precious for learning purposes.
This process involves many actors of ITDE world:
the ITDE manager, who has to be aware of social networking technologies and
services;
the learner, who has to face learning models which asks her/him always to be
pro-active and critic to contents;
the designer, who has to understand how original software solutions could
melt into digital environments already familiar to users/learners;
the teacher, who has to overcome any potential or residual resistance to
technology use;
the online tutor, who has to be an assiduous users of social networking service
and to keep updated in order to help and facilitate learners in their constant
interaction.
The picture below gives an idea of the social networking activities a user (or more)
can perform. The activities are dstributed into three painted areas:
create;
organize;
share.
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Figure 4. User participation for social networking instruments
Among the various professional listed in the previous page, the ITDE manager is the
one who supervises the entire developing of distance education programs. Thus, she/he
should have a very clear representation of all those social networking activities that strongly
deal with education methodologies and didactic strategies.
In fact, it is quite clear that social networking heavily contributed to mix formal and
informal learning; that is because distance education can be even delivered through a
personal digital environment (such as Elgg). Distance education, therefore, does not have to
“connect” learners each other, but it is absolutely necessary to find out how the preexisting
digital networks are structured in order to let the learners interact and transform their
educational performances in social performance.
If users spend a lot of time joining online communities, building new ones and
interacting to communicate thoughts, experiences, etc., there is already a kind of learning
process, very informal and very spontaneous.
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Today the mission of ITDE professionals (and managers, in particular) is to design
specific strategies which could fit to social networking mechanism with the aim to “refine”
the “raw” informal learning which spread knowledge elements across the Web.
Obviously, this does not mean that online platforms are completely useless; on the
contrary, in online courses, a platform should reflect, in some way, the social networking
philosophy. This could be done by offering learner most of the communication tool she/he
uses everyday
It is a fact that most of online platforms are following this approach, that is to
consider the learners interaction a central element and a precious structure to implement
several didactic strategies, not only those which are determined by specific psychological
paradigms.
Thereby, social networking constitutes itself an approach to distance education, being
an uninterrupted chain of knowledge sharing through the Internet. If millions of Web users
are at least members of a community, then it is reasonable that they all have a complex and
personal identity, which could tell us a lot of things on what they really know and on the
experiences they have.
Social networking could really help to discover new ways to communicate knowledge
by moving the focus toward a more and more ubiquitous learning developed by community
interactions.
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