Will 2015 be the year of open?
Will 2015 be the year of open? For me, New Year marks the beginning of a countdown to completing my PhD research which I hope to finalise before this time next year. I began this blog in January three years ago with the intention of recording my PhD journey, and it has become more of a reflective, sharing and learning tool than I ever imagined – a journey into open. Formality versus open A common tension I’ve experienced during the course of my research is the open and informal nature of shared connections and learning on social networking sites and the relative formality and rigidity of academic learning within a University context. In the blogosphere, learning is shared peer-to-peer in the spirit of collaboration. In an academic paper or a chapter in a book there is both a formal style to comply with and access constraints in the shape of a subscription or purchase. In the blogosphere feedback is instant and ideas built upon ideas; in the formal arena writing is produced as finished and polished. I appreciate the rigour of formal research and peer review whilst I enjoy the emergent nature of learning through social networks. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I do wonder if open has more transgressive possibilities. Open as a way of life I’m currently reading David Price’s Open: how we’ll work, live and learn in the future and his critique of formal learning resonates with the tensions I describe above. With audacious optimism, he argues that: “going ‘open’ is a social revolution that represents a fundamental challenge to the established order...
A novel way of conveying the essence of social media on the stage
For me social media is mostly about learning, sharing and making connections. The participatory and personal nature of discussion on platforms such as Twitter is the antithesis to traditional broadcast communications, and it is this subtle shift that can often be so challenging for institutions. I’ve been wondering how to convey this change in a more meaningful way when speaking at events and conferences – the traditional lecture format not only feels more in the broadcast tradition, it also infers expert knowledge on the presenter, when in the world of social media it seems to me that we are all on a journey of discovery. So when Sue Sibbald aka @BPDFFS and I agreed to speak about social media and mental health recovery at the recent CPA Association conference, we thought we’d try a different way of sharing our thoughts and experiences. We wanted to convey some of the essence of the discursive quality that platforms like Twitter afford, not just through what we said, but also how we said it. We decided to ditch the Prezi and employ a conversational format – that is, a conversation that would take place in public and on the stage. Whilst we agreed the questions we would ask each other beforehand (to make sure our dialogue flowed) we deliberately didn’t share our responses so that we would be spontaneous in the moment, develop points during our discussion, and perhaps engage in a bit of banter. In taking this approach, our plan was to illuminate the interactive and emergent nature of dialogue in social media spaces; to show how it is both personal...
Institutions and social media – disruption or appropriation?
When I first started getting in to social media, I was intrigued by its potential to disrupt spaces where power traditionally lies – ordinary people chipping away at the monoliths of institutions which have previously taken for granted their right to control information and knowledge. How to respond… How would those institutions respond? I could see three options – firstly ignore and hope it would go away, secondly appropriate social media spaces as additional communication channels, thirdly embrace the disruptive quality of social media to catalyse different sorts of relationships based on distributed rather than positional power. Spellbound or underwhelmed? These thoughts came back in to my mind when reading Using Social Media to Inform, Engage and Consult People in Developing Health and Community Care Services (HealthCare Improvement Scotland, 2013). It is full of information, advice and case studies to help organisations involve people in service changes. But I felt a bit disappointed. It didn’t quite capture the disruptive potential,l afforded by social media, that I find so spellbinding. The authors assert ‘social media must always complement, rather than replace, traditional methods of engaging with individuals and communities.’ And in once sense they are right. To only engage with people in social media spaces would mean excluding many. But that sentence also illuminates a conceptualisation of social media as an ‘add on’ to what already exists. It is one more thing to do. This is where I think institutions might miss an opportunity. The distributed networks, the amplification, the conversations and relationships afforded by social media have radical potential. If institutions merely seek to appropriate them as additional channels...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
