Cultural Considerations in Social Media Learning

What cultural factors do you think would influence the research findings?

Cultural factors inevitably impact behavior, trends, and engagement with social media. For research that examines the use of social media in learning environments, the consideration of cultural factors is essential when developing recommendations and conducting research that aims to develop and support social media for learning. 

Article Review: 

The article, “Social media and education: Reconceptualizing the boundaries of formal and informal learning” focuses on the topic of integrating social media in learning through the adoption of a theoretical model which presents, “social media as a space for learning with varying attributes of formality and informality” (Greenhow & Lewin 2016). To illustrate the study, the authors applied the theory to one study in Europe focused on primary aged students in 20 different countries, and one in the U.S focused on teenagers’ use of Hot Dish. While the authors are effective in explaining and illustrating the theory, the consideration of cultural factors would better position and contextualize the theory and support it as one that is universally viable.

Cultural Factors- Considerations:

Rodríguez-Hoyos, et al (2015) highlight several cultural factors that are essential to research that aims to legitimize and develop the progress of social media in learning environments including differences in children versus adolescent social media behavior, socioeconomic challenges, administrative and government policies, gender representation, and geographical differences. To further illustrate the way in which cultural factors can impact, shape, influence, support Greenhow and Lewin’s research, let's examine two factors highlighted by Rodrigues-Hoyos and colleagues: 

Digital Divide 

The consideration of digital access can give insight into how both eaching and learning with social media are uniquely impacted by the lack of technology and necessary skills to utilize social media for learning. One of Greenhow and Lewin’s (2016) case studies focused on primary and secondary aged students (7-14 years old) across 20 European countries and explored teachers' methods and the student experience in learning with social media. While the researchers were able to deliver legitimate findings that correlated with the social media continuum formalities theory, they also lightly mentioned inconveniences/ disruptions to teachers caused by “the time investment required, changing student attitudes, developing students’ digital literacy skills, and infrastructure/resource constraints,” (Greenhow and Lewin, 2016, p. 16). This is an important factor because while this factor does not limit the existence of the theory that social media affords learning across varying degrees of formalities, it does provide the context that the social media learning continuum is limited when teachers must invest time teaching students how to use social media as opposed to delivering instruction and providing students with the autonomy to truly learn across varying ranges of formalities. Ultimately, informal learning is limited when students do not have the tools, resources, and literacy skills to engage with social media autonomously. This consideration requires an additional level of best practices, training, and considerations in order to address the lack of the necessary literacies to support Greenhow and Lewin’s theory.

Gender perspective: 

Greenhow and Lewin’s theory is rooted in the perspective of social constructivism, “drawing on the idea that learning is situated in the context of circumstances, activity or culture,” (Greenhow and Lewin, 2016, p. 9). This aspect of the theory was illustrated through Greenhow and Lewin’s application of the theory on the study that examines U.S learners ages 16-25 and their learning behaviors on Hot Dish, a social media application focused on environmental activism. One main aspect of the findings on this theory provided that the process of learning was peer-influenced as the analysis of argumentation [between participants] clearly showed how individual’s comments, such as a consensus-building comment or counterargument shaped the dialogue that was constructed (Greenhow and Lewin, 2016). Given that co-construction of knowledge is an identified characteristic of learning that occurs in social media learning environments, it is important to consider factors that can determine how knowledge is constructed. Gender perspectives are traditionally limited in social media learning research, and consideration of the gender variable would support the analysis of issues such as the participation of women, how students feel when using devices, and what gender images are created in these spaces (Rodríguez-Hoyos, et al, 2015).

This acknowledges that social media lacks diversity in gender representation and as a result can skew user behavior and constructions of knowledge. Social media for learning must be specifically considered as education affordances are limited due to social media being primarily designed for networking as opposed to learning (Greenhow and Lewin, 2016). This is a helpful factor to consider, given that information may be skewed due to algorithms and platform design that caters largely to male demographics, thus causing a lack of equity in collaborative knowledge construction that occurs in social media environments.