CONCLUSIONS | socialmedialiteracy

New Keywords in Culture & Education

"Changes in the language are as much a part of the story of technology as innovative new products. Keywords remind us of the degree to which the story of technology is a human one, grounded not only in the calculi of science and engineering but also in the welter of everyday talk.”

- Striphas, 2014 -

The findings from the research support many of the positive claims about participatory culture and affinity spaces, but also reinforce some of the skepticism and counterarguments presented by other scholars. The findings shows that a number of key terms emerge across the discourses of developers, readers, writers and mediators. These terms are: “passion”, “sharing” and “conflict”.

The key terms express a shared understanding of what counts as literacy in social media environments. They also reflect a new understanding of identity and authority. Indeed, the notion of cultural expertise is defined in an interesting way within participatory culture. This understanding of expertise empowers and challenges both 'regular' and 'professional' users of social media to rely on other things other than institutional hierarchy to gain authority.

Passion The concept 'passion' is used to refer to users’ interest and their enthusiasm to explore and develop that interest further. In social media environments, passion is expressed through the creation of a network of tastes and experiences.	Sharing The concept of 'sharing' is used to refer to broad ranges of activities like distributing creative content or displaying social connections. Each of these activities is associated with the expression and development of passion. Users can create a public identity so others can identify their tastes and experiences. This allows users to contextualize and evaluate each others value assessments.	Conflict Developers influence how to act and talk through the process of designing social media, but also allow users to re-imagine the functions and purposes of different design elements. In fact, in various cases developers even stimulate users to customize the environment and to try out different modes of meaning-making that fall beyond the intended functions of the original design.
Sharing Sharing is also recognized as an essential practice for expressing trust and as such to acknowledge and encourage people’s participatory practices. The more users are acknowledged by others, the more status they acquire as an expert reader, writer, mediator, critic, etc. By sharing, users of social media steadily become resources for others in the social media environment.	Passion 'Passion' is also used by the participants to stress the image of social media as open environments that welcome diversity, experimentation and confrontation, creating a democratic social spaces that offers equal opportunities for participation and personal development.	Conflict The open character of social media is considered an essential element of successful affinity spaces. The discourses of the participants in the research indicate that the lack of control and the strong focus on customization in social media environments support and stimulate diversity and discussion.
Passion The concept of 'passion' is also used by the participants to demarcate the difference between passionate and impassionate users. This dichotomy could be used to reinstate the opposition expressed in the terms literate and non-literate or civilized and primitive. Impassionate could become a label to denote a large group of users who refuse to participate and thus fail to develop skills, knowledge, enthusiasm and emotions related to a particular topic of interest.	Sharing Participatory culture does not just offer opportunities for sharing, but also makes sharing a necessity. People’s contributions are always assessed in the light of new situations. Their status as 'expert' is therefore always under scrutiny. They are challenged to argue and exhibit expertise rather than to simply claim it. Thus, people are constantly encouraged to share. This creates an endless cycle of showing followed by acknowledging, questioning or disagreeing.	Conflict The accessibility of social media is also considered a potential weakness. The studied discourses highlight that the limited control and strong egocentrism can very easily lead to information overload and aggressive self-affirmation. The participants stress the importance and tension of supporting conflict, but also of sharing responsibility for establishing a set of general rules and criteria.