Thursday, March 06, 2014

Appropriating Facebook: Enacting Information Literacies

An interesting study newly published (open access) on Human IT:
Hanell, F. (2014). Appropriating Facebook: enacting information literacies, Human IT, 12 (3), 5–35. http://etjanst.hb.se/bhs/ith/3-12/index.htm The focus is a Facebook group set up as a course support for a class taken by trainee teachers, where students and two lecturers were participating. After examining in detail the ways in which the Facebook group was being used, the author explores what being information literate with Facebook means in this context.
"Abstract: The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the repurposing of Facebook into a tool for learning in teacher training, and how information literacies are enacted in the process. The study is informed by a socio-cultural view on information literacy which implies that learning and literacies are situated, tool-based practices. An ethnographic study of a Facebook Group with two hundred Swedish teacher trainees and two educators is conducted. Five semi-structured interviews contextualize and validate the online material. 201 conversations from the Group during April and May 2012 are analysed using the theoretical concept appropriation and the empirical lens of information literacy. The Facebook Group can be appropriated as a problem-solving tool and a relation-building tool. Depending on the mode of appropriation, different information literacies including different conceptions of credibility are enacted in the Facebook Group."
Photo by Sheila Webber: a lost pig, March 2014 (it had disappeared by next day, I hope it had found its home again)

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