Me or the community?

I started off a discussion this morning on Twitter which had been fermenting for several days since I spoke at Brighton University earlier this week. We were discussing the differences and similarities between Facebook and Twitter. Specifically, we were interested in discussing what each was best for, and whether people found one better than the other for teaching, learning, discussion or socialising. I was wondering whether Twitter was actually more community oriented and outward looking than Facebook, which to me often seems to be more closed down and inward looking. To start, I asked: Facebook is all about 'me'. Twitter is all about community. Discuss.

Will Dayamport made a profound statement right at the start of the discussion when he tweeted: no social platform is a community. they are only vehicles for building a community. This is of course true, in the sense that platforms are tools that facilitate, but are they as neutral as we think? What about affordances of each tool? What do they suggest to us and how do we respond? Next, Frances Bell suggested that all social media have channels and services that host multiple behaviours, so simple dichotomies don't work. While these contributions were helpful, they reach the core of what I was interested in. I was trying to get to the root of the issue, which is whether people see Facebook as a more closed down and private space than Twitter, which I consider to be much more open. Jeffrey Keefer made another valuable comment when he pointed out that although social media platforms facilitate and support, they don't do the work for us. Social media are great tools for building online communities, but how do we use them, and is one tool better than another for a particular purpose?

Because Twitter is open, and you are not required to be 'friends' or have membership of a group to interact with others, I was really asking whether Twitter has the capacity to be more open and community oriented than Facebook. To me, Facebook seems very closed and compartmentalised, and is therefore potentially useful for protected discussions (for example where young people or vulnerable groups need to chat in a walled garden environment) but Twitter opens up chat for all, regardless of their status or relationship with others. Yes, I know that Facebook can be used as an open forum too, as can most social media platforms, but our expectations may militate against this. Is Twitter therefore the best social media tool for open, democratic discourse? Others contributed to this discussion, especially around the notion of digital identity, including Anita Devi who asked whether the 'me' can really exist in a Facebook vacuum. Anne Olsen argued that Twitter is more focused on learning and sharing with a likeminded community. In Facebook, she said, 'friends' don't always share the same interests, so it is more likely to be about 'me' than it is the community. Susan Bannister saw little difference between the two platforms in her own use, revealing that for her (and probably for many other users) although Facebook used to be about family and friends, and Twitter was more focused on work, now the boundaries have become blurred. Nic Laycock agreed, pointing out how complex relationships have become since the inception of social media. Others have managed to maintain their boundaries between the two platforms. Linda Kirkman for example, finds Facebook good to keep in touch with people she knows in real life, and used Twitter mainly for ongoing professional development and support for her post-graduate studies.

What do other people use the tools for? One of my own students Hannah Shelton said that for her Twitter is for sharing thoughts that interest others and help them to build their PLN, whilst Facebook is still about socialising. Malcolm Clarke sees Twitter as an open place of catharsis - somewhere to go where 'you can get it off your chest', whilst Lenandlar Singh suspects that we have come to expect Facebook to be a more private, closed environment. Another of my students, Megan Douglas made an interesting distinction based on what people see the two platforms doing for them personally. She tweeted: Facebook is personal 'what's on your mind?' yet Twitter 'what's happening?' and argued that Twitter brings people with similar interests together. This is after all, what a community is about. People who have shared interests, common purposes and the ability to share their ideas in conversation become the community. I'm still convinced that Facebook is more inward looking, and is more about personal connections, while Twitter is more focused on community, and wider connections, sharing and learning. My colleague Peter Yeomans has some marked views about Twitter and Facebook. Twitter he says, is a bear pit - a speaker's corner where you talk to the world and hope someone listens, whilst Facebook is where you seek approbation from those who like you. Facebook is self-indulgent, he says, but Twitter is altruistic. What do you think?

This is an interesting, wide ranging discussion I hope will continue. Please join in by adding your comments below if you have any.

Image source


Me or the community? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.