24
A Critical Review of Social Networks for Language Learning Beyond the Classroom

KATERINA ZOUROU

Over the last decade, social media has gone from being a dream of Silicon Valley technologists to a central part of contemporary digital life around the world.

(boyd 2015, p. 2)

Introduction

Computer‐assisted language learning(CALL) scholars have become increasingly interested in social media for language education, be it for the appeal of these technologies to specific groups of learners, or for the sense of intellectual curiosity regarding the pedagogical affordances of artifacts not explicitly designed for learning. Independently of the motive to inquire into the field, it is undeniable that social media have been generating enthusiasm, skepticism, expectations, and even illusions since 2004, when the term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O'Reilly and his colleagues (Musser et al. 2007).

The scope of this chapter is twofold. First, it offers a state‐of‐the art review of current scholarship pertaining to social media in language education and draws parallels with other digitally enhanced language‐learning fields, such as mobile assisted language learning (MALL) and game‐based learning (GBL), and situates them within second language (L2) research themes on agency and openness. Second, it conveys an exploratory view on future possibilities and promising directions that merit further investigation. This risk‐taking exercise, due to the continuously evolving nature of the artifacts and unprecedented practices they convey, deems it useful to situate social media in the constellation of emerging directions in concomitant fields of activity, since social media, by their very nature, call for boundary‐crossing reflection. We will thus focus on topics such as open/citizen science and crowd learning for their potential in CALL. A study on social media should be open to cross‐fertilization of practices and approaches adopted in other fields of inquiry, despite the tentative and subjective character of this exercise.

The chapter begins by providing the theoretical and methodological framework of the study. It then approaches social media through the complexity of clear‐cut definitions, which lead to the adoption of three key social media features. This serves to situate social networked CALL within other CALL areas, namely MALL and GBL. Subsequently, I will focus on social networking in language education inside and outside the classroom, by critically reflecting on “domesticating” practices, and by reviewing evidence‐based studies in this field. Particular attention will be paid to unconventional practice documented in the literature. In the Conclusion I attempt to open up to new directions with reference to two promising topics: agency and openness.

Theoretical and methodological framing

As Lamy and Goodfellow (2010) claim, “The scope of innovation is likely to be far wider than the introduction of some new technologies into the repertoire of the language teacher. Moreover, the kinds of social co‐creativity involved will have goals that go beyond those of any individual's linguistic or intercultural competence” (109). According to sociocultural (Bonk and Cunningham 1998; Lantolf and Thorne 2006; Wertsch 1991) and situated‐learning approaches (Brown et al. 1989; Lave and Wenger 1991), learning is deeply rooted in the sociotechnical context from which it takes its full meaning. This chapter looks at the dialogic relationship between humans and technology, far from a technodeterministic narrative.

Social media are affordances (Gibson 1979/1986) on which van Lier (2004) builds his ecological perspective and argues that “the perceived objects (or events) are not independent of the perceiver; indeed, in ecological terms they are seen as relationships between particular attributes of the perceiver and particular attributes of the environment” (Lier 2004, p. 90; for a timely discussion see also Cappellini and Combe 2017). This approach is even more instrumental in studies on social media as these tools have not been conceived for educational purposes. Such an approach allows consideration of possibilities to which less attention has been given by current research or to which current practice failed to reveal the artifact's full range of possibilities.

The methodological approach adopted in this chapter is critical appraisal (Zourou and Lamy 2013), which problematizes concepts by questioning assumptions and revisiting interpretations. In Lamy and Goodfellow's terms (Lamy and Goodfellow 2010, p. 131), critical appraisal uses “a wide cultural‐historical lens (…) aimed to cast a critical light on what we see as assumptions underpinning the work of [a scholar] community, in order to open up ways of thinking.” The authors also argue that “such a critique involves asking historically‐informed questions about whose interests the practice might serve and how its hidden power relations might be deconstructed and understood” (Lamy and Goodfellow 2010, p. 131).

Approaching social media

Framing the object of analysis

It has been a common practice in the research literature to enumerate social media categories or tools to understand and delimitate the object under scrutiny. Such an approach is inevitably a boundary‐making one: for instance, blogs and wikis have been (automatically) positioned as social media and, based on the assumption of the “Web 2.0 revolution,” have been consequently framed as revolutionary.

This approach leads to the quick outdating of categories and definitions, for several reasons. First, social media did not occur unexpectedly, as the social web belongs to the continuum of web technology (cf. Berners‐Lee 2009). Second, social media applications are part of the broader and fast‐evolving technological landscape that affects all connected artifacts. For instance, social networking, a key feature of social media, is now possible through calling/messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Viber, or Telegram, which are tools that would not fall under a typical social media categorization.

Third and more important, defining social media as merely a set of technological artifacts, implying their “revolutionary” character only on the basis of their newness, encumbers a deeper understanding of the essence of technology mediated human interaction. For instance, using Facebook in a language class simply because it is “revolutionary” or “innovative” is not useful unless attention is paid to the broader sociohistorical context of use and to its pedagogical value. Several studies on social media enhanced L2 still convey a technodeterministic lens, which overlooks the need for a better understanding of how technology shapes and is shaped by human activity.

In what follows I will opt for an understanding of social media that is not based on a boundary‐making exercise defining which tool can be called social media and which cannot. Rather, I will emphasize three key features of the internet before 2000, then rapidly grew in the social media “golden age” (2000–2010), before spreading into the vast majority of digital applications and tools in current and most probably future settings: user participation, openness, and network effects. Outlining these three features gives impetus in the boundary‐crossing approach that I adopt in this chapter and especially in positioning social media in the broader sociotechnical landscape of human computer mediation.

The identification of these features belongs to Tim O'Reilly and his team (Musser et al. 2007) and it has been discussed in Zourou (2012) and used as a conceptual framework in Lamy (2013). The terms social networks, social media and the social web will be used interchangeably, whereas Web 2.0 refers to the technical infrastructure on which social networks evolve (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). O'Reilly refers to Web 2.0 in his specification of the three features, yet the relative vagueness of “2.0” (why not 1.5 or…2.8?) encourages us to use the term social media as its equivalent.

Three features of social media

User participation, the first feature, differs from the type of participation that occurs through static webpages and communication tools before approximately 2000, because, as O'Reilly and his colleagues note, “The key to [the social web] is not just user participation, it is participation leading to reuse” (Musser et al. 2007, p. 30). In this sense, reuse (of content and of data in general) is key to understanding what makes social media participation different. Here, the “architecture of participation” (p. 16) that is embedded in social media is fundamental to the possibilities given to users to “play” with content and thus adopt a more active role. Aggregating, tagging, remixing content, and giving new meaning to raw sources in entirely new forms of expression constitute both a technical possibility and a social function that give users far more space for creative engagement. An example of the extended possibilities of user creativity with digital materials is online curation. What distinguishes online curation from aggregation alone is that the former allows online curators not only to share content they have gathered in a very simple format, but also to add their personal touch (comments, reviews), therefore to contextualize information based on their expertise on a given topic and finally to share it publicly, inviting other users to expand this “assemblage” (cf. Jones 2015).

The second term, openness, is mainly defined by the horizontal structures afforded by social networks. Openness draws historically from the open source movement that precedes the appearance of social media. It refers at a basic level to the open technological architectures that run in horizontal mode, inviting users to get involved in the making of agile development models and social media tools. The open source movement and Wikipedia are expressions of the horizontal feature that underpins the concept of openness. The potential of openness in social networked CALL is discussed further in the “Future Directions” section of this chapter.

The third term, network effects, although definitely not absent from internet activity before the social web, takes on a new meaning because, as O'Reilly and his team note, “Network effects occur when a product or service becomes more valuable as the number of people using it increases” (Musser et al. 2007, p. 14). Boosting the network effects in the social web are: public sharing, commenting, tagging, the much simpler group creation and customization of social networking sites (SNS) than groups prior to the 2000s, and especially the technological enhancement of networking through features like friending and recommendation systems. Insightful studies regarding the nature of networking and the relations to offline connectivity are given by Selwyn (2009) and Ellison and boyd (2013), which are still pertinent despite the rapidly evolving sociotechnical landscape.

Among the three features, network effects is the one that can be considered the most groundbreaking with respect to the web experienced before 2000, as it spread beyond social media to encompass digital technologies and applications today. This is most probably connected to the centrality of user profiles in networked activity (boyd and Heer 2006). Data from a user's online activity is automatically aggregated and displayed on a user profile, such as rating, reviewing and recommendation activity, as well as reputation (display of gamified objects such as badges, stars, thumbs up, etc.). Therefore, Musser's network effects make it possible not only to network through dedicated social media applications (SNS at most), but to display one's activity and achievements to a wide audience.

Other features that have become part of the social media apparatus but are not among the typical social media features, are game mechanics and rating/reputation/recommendation systems. Due to the power of networking and publicly articulated user activity (boyd 2004), networking has become pervasive to such a degree that it occurs in almost every website and application. For instance, marketplaces (Airbnb, italki), review platforms (TripAdvisor, Amazon)1 or even social question‐and‐answer (QA) sites (Quora, StackExchange) embed a range of gamified elements – which are emblematic social media characteristics – such as reputation and recommendation systems, as those features have moved from core social media features to almost all websites and applications.

Other recent technological developments help in spreading network effects beyond social media applications, such as the single sign‐on facility (e.g. the ability to connect on Moodle with a Facebook account) and APIs (application program interfaces) enhancing connectivity among various applications without a user's intervention. Therefore, a user activity collected on one site is transferable to others. Thus, online activity has become a highly networked activity, be it in informal contexts and for leisure, or in formal learning contexts; for instance the learning management system (LMS) of a formal education institution can be accessed through a Facebook account, which makes it possible to externalize on social media some of the learning activity occurring in the institutional LMS.

On a more general level, this leads to the belief that social media features have become pervasive all over the internet, which has implications on CALL research.

Social media's pervasiveness and its implications for CALL research

Many MALL scholars identify social networking as a feature of mobile learning. For instance, Read et al. (2016), distinguished MALL experts, argue that “beyond the use of communication apps the majority of activity on mobile devices revolves around social networks or social media” (p. 2). Some scholars argue in favor of the use of the term mobile social learning (Read and Barcena 2015). Another example is Kukulska‐Hulme's (2010) analysis of MALL case studies in which the author emphasizes the social networking dimension as a facilitator of learning in distance education settings. Another distinguished MALL expert, Mark Pegrum, in his presentation of future directions in mobile learning, highlights “wider collaboration” as one of these directions, which coincides with social networking, “thanks to pervasive social media accessed on mobile devices” (Pegrum 2016, p. 425).

GBL studies also overlap with social networked CALL studies through gamification, or the use of game mechanics in non‐game contexts. Gamification elements have quickly been assimilated into the social media apparatus (see the section “Three features of social media”), and this brings GBL and social networked CALL even closer on a strictly technological level. Another clear example of the intersection between GBL and social networked CALL studies is a study by Cózar‐Gutiérrez and Sáez‐López (2016) in which the authors simultaneously explore networking and gaming dimensions of the same learning setting. In a special issue of Language Learning and Technology on “Game‐Informed L2 Teaching and Learning,” guest editors Reinhardt and Sykes also address “the study of ‘gameful’ learning through play in social networks” (Reinhardt and Sykes 2014, p. 1). It is also interesting to consider that both editors of the GBL special issue are recognized scholars in social networked CALL (Sykes and Holden 2011; Reinhardt and Zander 2011).

To sum up, segmentation of CALL areas (social networked CALL, GBL, MALL) only on the basis of the technology used invites reconsideration, enabling scholars to focus less on differentiating characteristics and more on shared agendas. I will return to this observation in greater detail in the Conclusion.

Social networking in language education

In this section I focus on social networking in formal education settings by critically reflecting on “domesticating” practices and by reviewing evidence‐based studies in this field. Particular attention will be paid to unconventional practice documented in the literature. In a sociocultural vein, I will emphasize the need to acknowledge learners as social actors, and to embrace language practice occurring in informal learning settings.

Social networked L2 practice in formal education

There is a wealth of monographs, collections of papers, and journal special issues on social networked language learning in and outside the classroom (Cappellini et al. 2017; Demaizière and Zourou 2012; Dixon and Thomas 2015; Guth and Helm 2010; Lamy and Zourou 2013; Thomas 2009; Vandergriff 2016). Seminal works offering an overview of current literature are carried out by Reinhardt (2017) and Lomicka and Lord (2016), to name but two. Reinhardt (2017) identifies three general foci with complimentary goals: L2 learning and use in vernacular SNS, SNS‐mediated L2 pedagogy, and the use of commercial SNSLL (p. 4). Lomicka and Lord (2016) address various theoretical approaches connected to social networks in the L2 classroom, as well as offering a review of principal contributions that research‐based studies have provided. Both studies by Reinhardt (2017) and Lomicka and Lord (2016) are meta‐analyses of current research that give insights into the future of social networked language learning.

More specifically to formal education contexts, there is an abundance of evidence‐based research, facing, as Reinhardt (2017) rightly argues, “Challenges of balancing the learning benefits from emergent user‐driven agency of everyday use with the demands to meet formal curriculum‐driven objectives” (p. 1). A selection of the most influential evidence‐based papers which emphasize the reciprocal relationship between technology and social action follows. McBride's paper (McBride 2009) is probably among the very few first‐generation papers in social networked L2 learning which refrains from “taming” technology to fit a formal setting, (cf. Peeters 2015). McBride discusses the potential for creating “mash‐ups” from various SNS, and how these can be used in language‐learning endeavors. Another study in a sociocultural vein, by Mills (2011), offers a fine analysis of how Facebook was used as an interactive tool where students could share collective reflection and access resources that enhanced the various topics discussed in class. Fuchs and Snyder (2013) also provide an insightful view on social networked interaction in a telecollaborative study with pre‐service language teachers.

In formal education settings, several authors stress the need for pedagogies that expose learners to a variety of genres, stances, and critical reflection (Warner and Chen 2017). As Hanna and de Nooy (2003) claim, teachers need to sensitize learners to online cultural practice and genres, “so that their participation in electronic discussion[s] is no longer seen as linguistic training, but as engagement with a cultural practice” (p. 71). In the same vein, Warner and Richardson (2017) argue that social media not only offer an opportunity for authentic communicative contexts but also represent “a means of enabling learners to expand the scope of positions, which they occupy as users of a new language” (p. 197). Against these principles, instructors tend sometimes to “domesticate” technology in L2 formal education, as discussed in the following section.

Domesticating social media in the language classroom

The concept of domestication of media and technology is set forth by Berker et al. (2006) as a theoretical approach which considers the complexity of everyday life and technology's place within its dynamics, rituals, rules, routines, and patterns. This dialogic process can, to various degrees, be smooth and natural or problematic and discontinuous.

A brief look at CALL studies embracing social media in the early years of their adoption demonstrates a desire to embrace the novelty of the tools but through the pedagogical rules, routines, and patterns of the time. In several studies the unpredictable, wild, and erratic dimension of social media, and the grassroot networking and bottom‐up organization that these tools afford, were quickly erased in favor of top‐down, tutor‐oriented, almost prearranged classroom use. Institutional constraints and curricular restrictions dominated the artifacts' novelty. There soon appeared studies aiming to tame this wild technology: some dictating the use of a social network for classroom assignments, others imposing it as part of mainstream assessment, others requesting classmates to befriend each other in order to carry out social network based assignments. Especially in the early years of social network adoption between 2000 and 2010, experimental studies also appeared which “compared” the use of a social network with the use of other tools (a forum discussion, a blog). Few studies paid attention to the “culturally influenced relations among semiotic forms, social contexts, material mediums, and meanings” (Chun et al. 2016, p. 71), before any possible implementation.

Social and leisure activity on social networks that users deploy freely and openly (Thorne et al. 2009) becomes intermingled with educational use, which, when especially of a top‐down, prearranged nature, may override the existing cultures‐of‐use (Thorne 2003). For instance, several studies warn against befriending as a prescribed activity in an educational context. Lamy (2013) stresses that teacher‐fronted invitations to join in prescribed talk or tasks “may be experienced as going counter to social network practices and may thereby induce more restricted forms of interaction such as answering the teacher or halting the interaction altogether” (p. 235). Similarly, McBride claims that “simply being classmates may or may not be sufficient grounds for students to become friends [on a social network]” and that “students might feel forced to interact socially with their teacher in a way they would not naturally be inclined to do” (McBride 2009, p. 43).

Understanding wider historical, semiotic, and cultural contexts in which language learning and socialization occurs is key in the pedagogical use of unpredicted, wild technologies. A model that defines/prescribes user social networked activity is not adequate, as it is incompatible with the dynamic, unpredicted nature of interacting and learning in social networks. By assessing learners' social‐networked based activities only from the perspective of their matching to a preexisting scenario or patterns and rules, we limit our view to the richness of social‐networked computer‐mediated communication and its value in L2 learning. In Warner and Richardson's (2017) terms, “The imperative to communicate, that is, the legacy of communicative language teaching, is in some ways at odds with the participation structures of many digital spaces” (p. 217). Furthermore, an infringement on students' privacy (disclosure of profiles and personal data to people not freely chosen to become friends) should be avoided, in combination with the respect of the personal, cultural, and semiotic identity‐related choices that individuals make on social networks. More importantly, scholars and practitioners should be open to unconventional, unpredicted practice.

Unconventional practice

The need to seek new frameworks of interpretation of social‐networked language practice is observable in studies that explore the unconventional practice of L2 learners with social media. These are examples of L2 learners reacting to prescribed, institutionally led social media use by engaging in other forms of non‐institutional, bottom‐up practice, or by using a social network in an unforeseen manner, as the following studies discuss.

Chik and Ho (2017) follow two L2 learners at different points in their lives, each using their own chosen learning technologies. The authors show how “learners actively seek learning opportunities in unconventional places” (p. 7) and, more importantly, to what degree personal preferences, intentions, learning objectives, and openness to the community shape their L2 trajectories. This study is instrumental in understanding unconventional practice through digital technologies and social media and echoes what Dooly calls the “self‐awareness of individual dispositions that may affect interaction” (Dooly 2016, p. 199).

Liaw and English (2013) discuss a telecollaborative project between students in France and Taiwan who were instructed to collaborate in pairs on an institutional digital space. The instructors/authors of the study were caught by surprise when discovering the existence of a new mediational tool, a Facebook group, initiated and curated by the two cohorts of students excluding the instructors, parallel to the tutor‐led telecollaborative project. In a similar study, Lamy (2013) explores online practice by students enrolled in an online course at the Open University. Shortly after the launch of the course giving access to two online institutional spaces, a student decided to create a Facebook group, FBPublic. “This having been greeted enthusiastically by peers” (our italics). A few weeks later another student suggested on FBPublic that the cohort might like to use a private Facebook group. “This idea also met with approval, and she created a second FB Group (henceforth FBPrivate)” (our italics, p. 227).

What is worth stressing in Lamy's (2013) and Liaw and English (2013) studies is the students' desire to build communication channels outside the formal telecollaboration initiative set up by the instructors, and in the absence of the instructors. Facebook groups were all maintained at least until the end of the formal education setting. This student‐initiated social‐networked activity is indicative of degrees of agency and openness among students belonging in formal educational contexts, though not exclusively.

The space between in‐ and out‐of‐class L2 learning

An overarching term to encompass the wealth of situations that may occur outside but in some connection with classroom learning, is language learning and teaching beyond the classroom (LBC), adopted by Benson (2011) and Reinders and Benson (2017). Other concomitant terms (each with their own nuances, depending on degree of connection to classroom settings) are extramural English (see Sundqvist, Chapter 21 of this volume), online informal learning of English (OILE; see Sockett and Toffoli, Chapter 31 of this volume) and out‐of‐class English learning (for a review cf. Sauro and Zourou 2019).

Dubreil and Thorne (2017) lay emphasis on the benefits of integration of instructed language education into a variety of lifeworld contexts and communities. The authors adopt Bass and Elmendorf's (2011) “social pedagogies” framework to prompt the need to situate learners as speakers/social actors in and out of the classroom. In Dubreil and Thorne's (2017) terms, “Framing L2 pedagogical practices as social pedagogies encourages language educators to seriously envision what it would mean to manage the interface between formal and informal learning contexts as a deliberate enterprise as they relate to instructed L2 course design” (p. 5). At the classroom level, this also means that associating out‐of‐class, informal learning with formal, in‐class activities using social networking tools “requires considerable commitment and open‐mindedness on the part of instructors as students now have more control of the activities and the pace of their learning” (Liaw and English 2013, p. 175).

Bridging formal and informal learning through pedagogical activities is vital (cf. “bridging activities,” Thorne and Reinhardt 2008), as “the expanded repertoire of technology available to learners enables them to traverse between classroom and informal learning” (Chik and Ho 2017, p. 2). However, the landscape around formal and informal learning is very nuanced and is composed of far more elements than “bridges,” as for instance the case of productive exchanges of students on a social network excluding the presence of instructors and occurring parallel to institutional digital spaces offered to them. In addition, students do not necessarily make the connection between formal and informal L2 practice. In Alm's (2015) case study, “even the more active participants felt that their informal language engagement was not perceived as useful in the context of formal language learning (p. 16). To describe parallel formal and informal learning phenomena such as those analyzed in Lamy's (2013) and Liaw and English (2013) studies outlined in the section “Unconventional practice,” the “bridge” may not be suitable as a metaphor, as students saw no need for “bridging” the formal and informal digital spaces or for disclosing to instructors the presence of their self‐made interactional spaces. This highlights the need to shape a CALL agenda that carefully looks at autonomy, agency, and openness not as by‐products of learning but by situating them as core features of the learning experience.

Informal learning

In this section I briefly discuss social‐networked L2 practices outside institutional settings. This overview is by definition non‐exhaustive, as the wealth and dynamics of these practices convey the unpredictable, self‐directed, and unrestricted nature of learner trajectories which can hardly be documented. The desire to bring informal learning processes out of the shadows and to legitimize them within the field of the learning sciences is increasingly noticeable, although serious efforts to valorize informal learning by eradicating its anecdotal character existed in the past (among others, Illich's concept of “deschooling society,” cited in Lemke and van Helden 2009). It also invites us to reconsider the value of informal learning practices and overcome our prejudices in perceiving them as “second best.” Regarding technology, it seems that the extreme “taming” of unpredictable technologies, has led some authors to argue for the “rewilding” of education (Thorne 2018). Technology‐mediated informal learning underlies the concept of learning “in the digital wilds” (Thorne et al. 2015), because, according to Thorne (2010):

arenas of social activity that are less controllable than classroom or organized online intercultural exchanges might be, but which present interesting, and perhaps even compelling, opportunities for intercultural exchange, agentive action and meaning making.

(p. 144)

Social media enhanced informal L2 learning offers a range of possibilities. One mainstream categorization is between sites designed for L2 learning and those that are not. Examples of the first category are SNSLL. Busuu, Duolingo, Memrise and the now defunct Livemocha and Lang‐8 are examples of SNSLLs, and there is a growing body of literature on their effectiveness and implications (e.g. Álvarez Valencia 2016; Stevenson and Liu 2010; Zourou et al. 2017; Zourou and Lamy 2013; see also Arvanitis, Chapter 8 of this volume).

Platforms and sites not designed for L2 but offering potential for informal learning are SNS and mobile applications not designed for L2 learning, such as massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), fandom games, commercial off‐the‐shelf (COTS) games, social QA sites, to name but a few. Research on informal L2 practice in stand‐alone sites (MMOGs, SNSLL, etc.) is fundamental to the understanding of attitudes, stances, and behaviors of L2 learners as social actors. However, to move the CALL agenda further, it is useful to adopt a more holistic approach to social media use across platforms and sites, as the following section, “Future directions,” suggests.

Future directions

Despite the tentative and highly subjective exercise of sketching future directions, in this section I will outline two topics worth exploring further by the scholar community: agency and openness.

Beginning with agency, attention should be brought to the fact that L2 learners increasingly craft learning trajectories through multiple platforms and sites, including social networking ones. Αs Zhao et al. (2016) argue, “People make decisions based on their consideration of multiple parameters across social media platforms, including audience and norms” (p. 98, our italics). It becomes vital to adopt a more holistic view of user practices, beyond stand‐alone sites or platforms, with scholarship moving from studies of social networks to how sociodigital ecosystems evolve. These studies need to investigate how users enact various identities, illustrating the dynamic, user‐driven flow of networked activity. One example would be users taking multiple roles in informal learning sites. Although this has been common in tandem language learning since 1970, in gamified, social‐networked L2 environments such as SNSLL, it is increasingly frequent that L2 learners do adopt the role of L1 tutor and also commit to content production in their L1 (cf. “produsage,” Bruns 2008). An example is Duolingo Incubator, the collaborative space of the homonymous related SNSLL, where native speakers co‐construct learning materials in their own language, in a crowdsourcing fashion. Although crowdsourcing in language education seems to have positive and negative dimensions (Zourou and Potolia accepted for publication), one cannot neglect the fact that this practice is an example among many reflecting new, multilayered roles and attitudes that L2 learners intentionally adopt in their lives.

The agentive, self‐driven character of these choices can be analyzed through the lens of autonomy, to which agency is closely related. For Reinhardt (2018), agency (and awareness) are necessary to afford learning and develop learner autonomy. In the author's terms, “a pedagogy that leverages social media practices for developing L2 learner autonomy should support learner agency by promoting user choice and self‐directed learning” (Reinhardt 2018, p. 10). In (socially) networked environments, scholarly work has addressed autonomy in informal learning contexts (Chik 2014), yet social autonomy (Lewis 2014) is a largely underexplored topic. Informal L2 users demonstrate free will to support other users throughout their learning process and their requests for support (Zourou et al. 2017), which concurs with the participatory culture (Jenkins et al. 2016) often related to social media. Evidence‐based research is still scarce (Kessler 2013) and merits further investigation.

As for openness, it seems that this pillar in O'Reilly's classification has been placed in the background to the advantage of the two others – user participation and network effects. Openness is somehow considered as “commonsense” or “natural” in understandings of social media. In contrast, I argue that openness is de facto the conceptual precursor (e.g. open source movement in 1990s) as well as the window to the future of digital technologies, the long‐lasting feature fueling the networked participatory culture. Openness is, I argue, the key feature of the Berners‐Lee World Wide Web of the 1980s, expanded through the social web as we currently experience it, and catalyst to pioneering network‐based initiatives, such as the Open Agenda (Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Education). In the Open Education field, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement traction in the CALL field. It is worth highlighting that openness questions and transcends sociodigital activity; it becomes common for scientists, citizens, and school pupils to collaborate in science experiments (cf. citizen science), for users to collaborate to aggregate and analyze open government data (open data/citizen journalism), or for geographically dispersed users to openly co‐create resources in their native language (digital activism and crowdsourcing). Sharples et al. (2015) offer some examples, yet the terrain is largely underexplored. Thus, knowledge creation has fundamentally changed, with implications for formal and informal learning settings, and there is a unique opportunity for practitioners and scholars to seek boundary‐crossing activities for learners as social actors.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have discussed new conceptualizations of social media that break away from decontextualized, boundary‐making definitions that segregate tools in social media and non‐social media. I have highlighted the pervasiveness of social media functionalities in almost every digital technology nowadays by tracing a trajectory from the periphery to the center of digital technologies, and through this I have reconnected to affiliated CALL areas such as GBL and MALL. As social‐networked practice largely escapes formal learning routines (cf. the section “Unconventional practices”), I have argued in favor of approaches that follow the dynamic, unpredictable, erratic flows of activity instead of overcontrolling and taming these “wild” technologies. Agency and openness are, I argue, two promising topics that are worth further investigation in CALL.

Along those lines, I would propose that instead of organizing CALL agendas around technologies, as is common in CALL venues (conferences, symposia, etc.) with the clustering of presentations around Special Interest Groups (SIGs) such as “virtual worlds,” “MALL,” “social networks,” “gaming,” and the like, it may be interesting to attempt at least once to cluster presentations around CALL themes such as “agency,” “social participation,” “civic engagement,” “mobility and inclusion,” or others, as an attempt to rethink beyond technology into social activity and meaning‐making and how they are mediated by humans and technology. The role of social networks would be instrumental in informing these themes.

REFERENCES

  1. Alm, A. (2015). “Facebook” for informal language learning: perspectives from tertiary language students. The EuroCALL Review 23 (2): 3–18. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1082622.
  2. Álvarez Valencia, J.A. (2016). Language views on social networking sites for language learning: the case of Busuu. Computer Assisted Language Learning 29 (5): 853–867.
  3. Bass, R. and Elmendorf, H. (2011). Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course Design. New York: Teagle Foundation.
  4. Benson, P. (2011). Beyond the Language Classroom. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  5. Berker, T., Hartmann, M., Punie, Y., and Ward, K.J. (2006). Domestication of Media and Technology. New York, NY: Open University Press.
  6. Berners‐Lee, T. (2009). "A Conversation with Tim Berners‐Lee". Web 2.0 Summit, October 20–22, 2009. San Francisco, CA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY5skobffk0
  7. Bonk, C.J. and Cunningham, D.J. (1998). Searching for learner‐centered, constructivist, and sociocultural components of collaborative educational learning tools. In: Electronic Collaborators: Learner‐Centered Technologies for Literacy, Apprenticeship, and Discourse (eds. C.J. Bonk and K.S. King), 25–50. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  8. boyd, d. (2004). Friendster and publicly articulated social networks. In: Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 24–29, 2004. Retrieved from http://www.danah.org/papers/CHI2004Friendster.pdf.
  9. boyd, d. (2015). Social media: a phenomenon to be analyzed. Social Media + Society: 1–2.
  10. boyd, d. and Heer, J. (2006). Profiles as conversation: networked identity performance on Friendster. In: Proceedings of the Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS‐39). Kauai, HI: IEEE Computer Society. January 4‐7, 2006. Retrieved from http://www.danah.org/papers/HICSS2006.pdf.
  11. Brown, J.S., Collins, A., and Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher 18 (11): 32–41.
  12. Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.
  13. Cappellini, M. and Combe, C. (2017). Analyser des compétences techno‐sémio‐pédagogiques d'apprentis tuteurs dans différents environnements numériques: résultats d'une étude exploratoire. Alsic 20 (3) Retrieved from http://journals.openedition.org/alsic/3186.
  14. Cappellini, M., Lewis, T., and Rivens Mompean, A. (eds.) (2017. CALICO). Learner Autonomy and Web 2.0. Sheffield: Equinox eBooks Publishing.
  15. Chik, A. (2014). Digital gaming and language learning: autonomy and community. Language, Learning and Technology 18 (2): 85–100. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2014/chik.pdf.
  16. Chik, A. and Ho, J. (2017). Learn a language for free: recreational learning among adults. System 69: 162–171.
  17. Chun, D., Kern, R., and Smith, B. (2016). Technology in language use, language teaching, and language learning. The Modern Language Journal 100 (Supplement 2016): 64–80.
  18. Cózar‐Gutiérrez, R. and Sáez‐López, J.M. (2016). Game‐based learning and gamification in initial teacher training in the social sciences: an experiment with MinecraftEdu. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 13 (2): 1–11.
  19. Demaizière, F. and Zourou, K. (2012). Social media and language learning: (R)evolution?” Special issue. Alsic 13 Retrieved from https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/1695.
  20. Dixon, E. and Thomas, M. (2015). Researching Language Learner Interactions Online: From Social Media to MOOCs, CALICO Monograph Series, vol. 13. San Marcos, TX: CALICO.
  21. Dooly, M. (2016). “Please Remove Your Avatar from My Personal Space”. Competences of the telecollaboratively efficient person. In: Online Intercultural Exchange: Policy, Pedagogy, Practice (eds. R. O'Dowd and T. Lewis), 192–208. London: Routledge.
  22. Dubreil, S. and Thorne, S.L. (2017). Social pedagogies and entwining language with the world. In: Engaging the World: Social Pedagogies and Language Learning (eds. S. Dubreil and S.L. Thorne), 1–11. Boston, MA: Cengage.
  23. Ellison, N. and boyd, d. (2013). Sociality through social network sites. In: The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies (ed. W.H. Dutton). Oxford University Press Retrieved from http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199589074.001.0001/oxfordhb‐9780199589074‐e‐8.
  24. Fuchs, C. and Snyder, B. (2013). It's not just the tool: pedagogy for promoting collaboration and community in social networking in CMC. In: Social Networking for Language Education (eds. K. Zourou and M.‐N. Lamy), 117–134. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  25. Gibson, J. (1979/1986). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  26. Granovetter, M.S. (1977). The strength of weak ties. In: Social Networks, 347–367. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press.
  27. Guth, S. and Helm, F. (2010). Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, Literacies and Intercultural Learning in the 21st Century, vol. 1. Bern: Peter Lang.
  28. Hanna, B. and de Nooy, J. (2003). A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: electronic discussion and foreign language learning. Language, Learning and Technology 7 (1): 71–85. Retrieved from http://www.lltjournal.org/item/2418.
  29. Jenkins, H., Ito, M., and boyd, d. (2016). Participatory Culture in a Networked Era. New York: Polity.
  30. Jones, C. (2015). Openness, technologies, business models and austerity. Learning, Media and Technology 40 (3): 328–349.
  31. Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons 53 (1): 59–68.
  32. Kessler, G. (2013). Collaborative language learning in co‐constructed participatory culture. Calico Journal 30 (3): 307.
  33. Kukulska‐Hulme, A. (2010). Mobile learning as a catalyst for change. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning 25 (3): 181–185. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47736458/download.
  34. Lamy, M.‐N. (2013). ‘We Don't Have to Always Post Stuff to Help Us Learn’: informal learning through social networking in a Beginners' Chinese group. In: Online Teaching and Learning: Sociocultural Perspectives (ed. C. Meskill), 219–238. London: Bloomsbury.
  35. Lamy, M.‐N. and Goodfellow, R. (2010). Telecollaboration and learning 2.0. In: Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, Literacies and Intercultural Learning in the 21st Century, vol. 1 (eds. S. Guth and F. Helm), 107–138. Bern: Peter Lang.
  36. Lamy, M.‐N. and Zourou, K. (2013). Social Networking for Language Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  37. Lantolf, J. and Thorne, S.L. (2006). Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  38. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  39. Lemke, J. and van Helden, C. (2009). New learning cultures: identities, media, and networks. In: Learning Cultures in Online Education (eds. R. Goodfellow and M.‐N. Lamy), 151–169. London: Continuum Books.
  40. Lewis, T. (2014). Learner autonomy and the theory of sociality. In: Social Dimensions of Autonomy in Language Learning (ed. G. Murray), 37–59. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  41. Liaw, M.‐L. and English, K. (2013). Online and offsite: student‐driven development of the Taiwan‐France telecollaborative project beyond these walls. In: Social Networking for Language Education (eds. M.‐N. Lamy and K. Zourou), 158–176. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  42. van Lier, L. (2004). The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective. Boston: Kluwer Academic.
  43. Lomicka, L. and Lord, G. (2016). Social networking and language learning. In: The Routledge Handbook of Language Learning and Technology (eds. F. Farr and L. Murray), 255–268. London: Routledge.
  44. McBride, K. (2009). Social‐networking sites in foreign language classes: opportunities for re‐creation. In: The Next Generation: Social Networking and Online Collaboration in Foreign Language Learning (eds. L. Lomicka and G. Lord), 35–58. San Marcos, TX: CALICO Monograph Series.
  45. Mills, N. (2011). Situated learning through social networking communities: the development of joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and a shared repertoire. CALICO 28 (2): 345–368.
  46. Musser, J. and O'Reilly, T., and the O'Reilly Radar Team (2007). Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly.
  47. Peeters, W. (2015). Tapping into the educational potential of Facebook: encouraging out‐of‐class peer collaboration in foreign language learning. Studies in Self‐Access Learning Journal 6 (2): 176–190.
  48. Pegrum, M. (2016). Future directions in mobile learning. In: Mobile Learning Design. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology (eds. D. Churchill, J. Lu, T.K.F. Chiu and B. Fox), 413–431. Singapore: Springer.
  49. Pollock, R. (2018/2016). Ubernomics: Platform Monopolies & How to Fix Them. [Blog post] https://rufuspollock.com/ubernomics/ First version: Dec 2016, updated Feb 2018.
  50. Read, T. and Bárcena, E. (2015). Mobile social learning as a catalyst for cultural heritage. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Personalized Access to Cultural Heritage‐Volume 1352, Atlanta (29 March–1 April), 19–23. CEUR Workshop Proceedings http://CEUR‐WS.org. Retrieved from http://ceur‐ws.org/Vol‐1352/paper4.pdf.
  51. Read, T., Barcena, E., and Kukulska‐Hulme, A. (2016). Mobile and massive language learning. In: Technology‐Enhanced Language Learning for Specialized Domains: Practical Applications and Mobility (eds. E. Martín‐Monje, I. Elorza and B.G. Riaza), 151–161. London: Routledge.
  52. Reinders, H. and Benson, P. (2017). Research agenda: language learning beyond the classroom. Language Teaching 50 (4): 561–578.
  53. Reinhardt, J. (2017). Social network sites and language education. In: Language, Education, and Technology. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 3e, vol. 9 (eds. S.L. Thorne and S. May), ix–xxi. New York: Springer.
  54. Reinhardt, J. (2018). Social media in the L2 classroom: Everyday agency, awareness, and autonomy. In: Technology in ELT: Achievements and challenges for ELT development (ed. H. Castañeda‐Peña), 17–34. Bogota: Publicaciones DIE.
  55. Reinhardt, J. and Sykes, J.M. (2014). Special issue commentary: digital game activity in L2 teaching and learning. Language, Learning and Technology 18 (2): 2–8. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2014/commentary.pdf.
  56. Reinhardt, J. and Zander, V. (2011). Social networking in an intensive English program classroom: a language socialization perspective. CALICO Journal 28 (2): 326–344.
  57. Sauro, S. and Zourou, K. (2019). CALL in the digital wilds.[Special issue]. Language, Learning and Technology 23 (1): 1–7.
  58. Selwyn, N. (2009). Faceworking: exploring students' education‐related use of Facebook. Learning, Media and Technology 34 (2): 157–174.
  59. Sharples, M., Delgado Cloos, C., Dimitriadis, Y. et al. (2015). Mobile and accessible learning for MOOCs. Journal of Interactive Media in Education 1 (4): 1–8. Retrieved from https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.ai.
  60. Stevenson, M.P. and Liu, M. (2010). Learning a language with Web 2.0: exploring the use of social networking features of foreign language learning websites. CALICO Journal 27 (2): 233.
  61. Sykes, J. and Holden, C. (2011). Communities: exploring digital games and social networking. In: Present and Future Promises of CALL: From Theory and Research to New Directions in Language Teaching (eds. L. Ducate and N. Arnold), 311–336. San Marcos, TX: CALICO Monograph.
  62. Thomas, M. (2009). Handbook of Research on Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning. New York: IGI Global.
  63. Thorne, S. (2003). Artifacts and cultures‐of‐use in intercultural communication. Language, Learning and Technology 7 (2): 38–67. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/thorne/default.html.
  64. Thorne, S. (2010). The ‘Iintercultural turn’ and language learning n the crucible of new media. In: Telecollaboration 2.0 for Language and Intercultural Learning (eds. F. Helm and S. Guth), 139–164. Bern: Peter Lang.
  65. Thorne, S. (2018). “Technologies, morphologies of communicative action, and the rewilding of language education.” Keynote address, American Association for Applied Linguistics, Chicago, Illinois, March 25, 2018.
  66. Thorne, S. and Reinhardt, J. (2008). ‘Bridging Activities,’ new media literacies, and advanced foreign language proficiency. CALICO Journal 25 (3): 558–572.
  67. Thorne, S., Black, R.W., and Sykes, J. (2009). Second language use, socialization, and learning in internet interest communities and online gaming. The Modern Language Journal 93: 802–821.
  68. Thorne, S., Sauro, S., and Smith, B. (2015). Technologies, identities, and expressive activity. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 35: 215–233.
  69. Vandergriff, I. (2016). Second‐Language Discourse in the Digital World: Linguistic and Social Practices in and beyond the Networked Classroom. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  70. Warner, C. and Chen, H.‐I. (2017). Designing talk in social networks: what Facebook teaches about conversation. Language, Learning and Technology 21 (2): 121–138. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/june2017/warnerchen.pdf.
  71. Warner, C. and Richardson, D. (2017). Beyond participation: symbolic struggles with(in) digital social media in the L2 classroom. In: Engaging the World: Social Pedagogies and Language Learning (eds. S. Dubreil and S. Thorne), 199–226. Boston: Cengage.
  72. Wertsch, J.V. (1991). Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  73. Zhao, X., Lampe, C., and Ellison, N.B. (2016). The social media ecology: User perceptions, strategies and challenges. In: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (7–12 May), 89–100. San Jose: ACM.
  74. Zourou, K. (2012). On the attractiveness of social media for language learning: a look at the state of the art. Alsic 15 Retrieved from: http://journals.openedition.org/alsic/2436.
  75. Zourou, K. and Lamy, M.‐N. (2013). Social networked game dynamics in Web 2.0 language learning communities. Alsic 16 Retrieved from: http://journals.openedition.org/alsic/2642.
  76. Zourou, K. and Potolia, A. (accepted for publication). Openness in a crowdsourced massive online language community. In: Open Education and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching: The Rise of a New Knowledge Ecology (eds. C. Blyth and J. Thomas). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
  77. Zourou, K., Potolia, A., and Zourou, F. (2017). Informal social networking for language learning: insights into autonomy stances. In: Learner Autonomy and Web 2.0 (eds. M. Cappellini, T. Lewis and A.R. Mompean), 141–167. CALICO. Sheffield: Equinox eBooks Publishing.

Note

  1. 1 Pollock (2018) distinguishes marketplaces (where sellers and buyers get in touch directly) from platforms which may embed a marketplace (Amazon) or not (TripAdvisor). Review mechanisms are emblematic in both.
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.230.1.23