Over at Knowledge Tree is a recent essay i wrote called Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? For many who follow this blog, the arguments are not new, but i suspect some folks might appreciate the consolidated and not-so-spastic version. At the very least, perhaps you’ll be humored to see my writing splattered with the letter ‘s’ instead of the letter ‘z’ (it’s an Australian e-journal). There’s also an MP3 of me reading the essay for those who fear text (which is very novel since y’all know how much i fear audio/video recordings of me, but i did resist trying to sound funny while pronouncing the letter s instead of the letter z). And here’s a PDF of the essay for those who wishing to kill trees.
In conjunction with this essay, there’s a life chat at 2PM Australian Eastern on 22 May. This translates to 9PM PST on 21 May and midnight New York time (which is where i’ll be so hopefully i won’t be too loopy, or at least no more loopy than i am feeling right now).
Enjoy!
Yes!!! I love new essays. (was that nerdy?)
As always, you rock!
“Persistence. What you say sticks around. This is great for asynchronous communication, but it also means that what you said at 15 is still accessible when you are 30 and have purportedly outgrown those childish days…. In mediated publics,… persistence, searchability, and replicability introduce audiences that were never present at the time when the expression was created.”
danah, I hope your students appreciate your flexible approach to classroom decorum. I don’t think many academics would say:
“I welcome anyone to show up to a lecture hall wearing a bathing suit, lay down a towel, and proceed to rub oil all over themselves.”
Of course, in addition to your current students, this also applies to all future students (even those in the class of 2057 – many of whom rated danah as a cranky old lady according to “SurveilMyProfessors24/7.com” – though rumor has it these ratings may have been influenced by fed-up custodial staff pretending to be students).
‘s’ i’ve always felt has better aesthetics than ‘z.’ Cultural baggage no doubt, i’m a londoner teaching in US, but one wonders how your ‘humour’ works. Do we laugh at you while your laughing at us or is it vice versa? Maybe we actually laugh together (which is probably the better one and what happens in my classes). Or maybe we are witnessing a subtle mechanism of ‘difference making,’ a sort of banal nationalism written into the ‘s & z’ mundanity of our lives. It keeps us apart and slowly but quietly feeds the wider ideology that we should live in a world divided by nations. A long shot i know, but i really wanted to defend the ‘s’ from any belittling. As i say it just feeeeeeels better to me. You should try it more often.
Great blog btw.
One of the questions you challenge educators to ask youths is “How would you feel if your mother, grandmother, coach, future boss, etc. looked at your profile?” Just as you assert that mediated publics have a property of “persistence,” I’ve heard the question phrased as “How would you feel if your grandmother or your *grandchild* looked at your profile?” This is how one (nameless, because I didn’t catch his name!) educator at a recent conference put it during a session discussion Facebook. It’s a subtle rephrasing but an important and thought-provoking one.
Hi Danah,
I’ve commented before however it didnt make it through your filter. I hopen this does as I have a number of things I’d like to engage you with and in addition to your recent contact with an adoring Australian audience.
So much so there’s been a number of more senior VET staff here interested in possibly acquiring your services for a end of year E-Learning 07 conference to be held in Sydney.
Your direction and the Annenberg link is truly inspirational. Could you please contact Robyn or I sometime http://www.nswlearnscope.com/contact-us/ soon to see if we can organise some virtual presentation work for you.
Much appreciated. Please publish.
http://www.nswlearnscope.com/contact-us/ – still not sure whether that last message got through so I’ll try again.
Please contact us asap. re. virtual presentation work.
Thankyou.
been a year or so since i looked through your blog: got awful busy using very minimal social network ideas as i entered partnership track: hours when from the reasonable 8-10 hrs to about 15 hrs with no days off for some time. post call right now: I kind of increased my productivity to a person and a half and then some. It seems i connect more with workaholics during rounds and find myself with others who have no family life.
to be honest, this all sucks, even though bonuses will be great, (have been great) and all i want to do is blow up these computers, and cellphones and beepers are for the toilet.
hope you are well;
old blog annoyance:
stef, or Dr. P: say hello to Liz at mammamusings.