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The Culture of Connectivity - Jose Van Dijck - Chapter 2


In chapter 2, van Dijck gets a little more technical. He presents definitions for various aspects of the social media construction. 

Technologies included: data, metadata, algorithm, protocols, interfaces, and defaults

He broke down the concepts of users and usage:

"Implicit participation is the usage inscribed in the engineer's design by means of the coding mechanisms" (p.33). 

"Explicit use refers to how real or actual users interact with social media" (p.33).

He discuses content (text, music, or videos) and how these display the opinions of the users, the things they are interested in or want, and other social trends and consumer practices. 

He describes ownership of the social media site, governance (mechanisms, communication and data traffic management), and business models and intentions of the site and how these 3 things work with the previous 3 things (content, user agency, and content) to create online sociality.

Ultimately the focus of this chapter is to explain how online sociality has evolved and how it is a "dynamic infrastructure that shapes and is shaped by culture at large" (p. 44). I personally found this chapter interesting because while the information presented was not necessarily new to me, I found that through the explanation of the connection between the parts I got a better understanding of how the systems actually function both on the user side and the owner side. The concept that culture and social media have become so tethered together that they mutually influence each other is obviously evident and connecting this to this weeks class topic of the digital native, I think it makes it even more important to study how social media connects with both formal and informal learning. Students live in a blended world of Face to Face contact and the Digital that not understanding where and how social media can be utilized is doing them a disservice.    


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