Facebook for Film Studies
Plymouth e-Learning Conference, April 2009
Tony McNeill
Academic Development Centre
a.mcneill@kingston.ac.uk

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anthonymcneill (#pelc09)
http://digitalmigrant.blogspot.com/
2009/04/pelc09.html

Facebook for a film module

a ‘telling’ case study
A ‘telling’ case study?
There are said to be certain Buddhists
whose ascetic practices enable them
to see a whole landscape in a bean.
(Barthes 1974: 3)

Key issue 1: language
• what are the language varieties in SNS-
based interactions?
• how well do they fit with accepted
academic literacies?

Language and the ‘market’
The constitution of a linguistic market
creates the conditions for an objective
competition in and through which the
legitimate competence can function as
linguistic capital, producing a profit of
distinction on the occasion of each social
exchange.(Bourdieu 1992: 55)

Key issue 2: power
• does the use of Facebook lessen social
distance between participants in a
positive way?

Key issue 3: identity
• does the use of Facebook for “unruly”
identity performances (Selwyn 2007)
militate against its use in HE?

Facebook and resistance
… Facebook was acting as a ready
space for resistance and the contestation
of the asymmetrical power relationship
built into the established offline positions
of university, student and lecturer.
(Selwyn 2007)

Key issue 4: community
• to what extent can the participatory
ethos of SNS-based “affinity spaces”
(Gee 2004) be recreated for formal
study-related purposes?

Get out of my SNS?

SNS: a quick definition
They’re digital environments that enable
users to:
• hang out online (Stutzman 2005)
• micro-manage social life (Selwyn 2007)
• perform identity (Merchant 2006)
but also …

share stuff

thicken pre-existing relations
(Benkler 2006: 357)

“affinity spaces” (Gee 2004)

Key features of an SNS are:
• profile pages listing interests and activities
• opportunities for group creation
• ‘granular’ access controls
• communications tools (e.g. email, chat, a “wall”)
• document upload facilities (e.g. videos, pictures)
• range of applications (e.g. wikis, games)

Growing HE interest in SNSs
• external, • locally-hosted,
third-party open source
e.g. Ning e.g. Elgg
Facebook Mahara

Will’s said his interest was to…
• share teaching resources
• develop scholarly community
• enhance student-tutor relationship
• improve academic and pastoral support

share teaching resources
Teaching resources

develop scholarly community (1)
Scholarly community (1)

develop scholarly community (1)
Scholarly community (2)

enhance student-tutor relationship
Student-tutor relationship

improve academic support support
(1)
Academic & pastoral 1

improve academic support support
(2)
Academic & pastoral 2

improve academic support support
(3)
Academic & pastoral 3

what students said (1)
What the students said (1)

what students said (2)
What the students said (2)
I propa enjoyed it [the module] too, even
though it's not over. But it was really BIG!
and uno wat, i knew NOTHING on post-
modern. Hadn't watched Blade Runner,
Dark City, nothing!
Watched em one by one n OMD!!!! lol
(Unimaginable)

what students said (3)
What the students said (3)
I’m really glad you have FaceBook; I think
you should inspire more teachers to do it. I
think it brings you closer with your
students. Well done because you could really
say your experiment worked. I can't even
send you an email from blackboard so here I
am from my personal email.

Hesitant conclusions
• students know how to code switch
• can reduce social distance (but not on
its own)
• Facebook doesn’t automatically =
community; community has to exist first
• students ok with HE Facebook use

But …
… using Facebook is a question of style

further reading
Further reading
Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
boyd, d. & Ellison, N.B. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 pp.210-230
Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook \"friends:\" Social capital and
college students' use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,
12(4). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html
Gee, J.P. (2004) Situated Language and Learning: a critique of traditional schooling. London: Routledge
Mazer, J. P., Murphy, R. E., & Simonds, C. J. (2007). I'll see you on \"Facebook:\" The effects of
computer-mediated teacher self-disclosure on student motivation, affective learning, and classroom
climate. Communication Education, 56 (1) pp.1-17.
Merchant, G. (2006). Identity, Social Networks and Online Communication. E-Learning, 3(2) pp.235-244
Selwyn, N. (2007). Screw Blackboard... do it on Facebook! an investigation of students' educational
use of Facebook. Paper presented to Poke 1.0 – Facebook social research symposium, November.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/513958/Facebook-seminar-paper-Selwyn
Stutzman, F. (2005). Our Lives, our Facebooks. www.ibiblio.org/fred/pubs/stutzman_pub6.pdf

Laughing Squid: Facebook
http://flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/986548379/