Cartography Of Virtual Youth Communities As Learning And Knowledge Production Environments
Author(s):
Sara Victoria Carrasco Segovia (presenting / submitting) Cristina Salazar (presenting) Cristina Alonso Cano
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Format:
Poster

Session Information

06 SES 04.5 PS, General Poster Session

General Poster Session

Time:
2016-08-24
12:00-13:30
Room:
NM-Concourse Area
Chair:

Contribution

The poster presents the results of the cartography of virtual communities emerging from the project: “Comunidades Virtuales de Jóvenes: Hacer visibles sus aprendizajes y saberes” (“Virtual Youth Communities: Make visible their learning and knowledges”) - currently in development.  This research project seeks to recapture and disseminate young people’s learning and knowledge outside of school based on the identification and in-depth analysis of their participation in virtual communities.

Virtual communities are digital meeting environments for young people and adults driven by their curiosity, concerns, personal motivations or needs. In these communities, some young people find a place of connection, exchange, self-regulation, belonging and acknowledgement (of the self and community), where in it is possible to collaborate, design, create and share but, most importantly, learn from and with others.

The goal of the project is understanding how and what do young people learn in virtual communities, from a social learning perspective and focusing on the relation between learning, knowledge and the world. Building upon the theory of situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991), which seeks to understand what kind of social encounters and commitments foster learning, several questions arise, such as: why are virtual communities created?, why do young people become involved?, how do they self-regulate?, what makes young people maintain their involvement?, and, what kind of knowledge is produced?, among others.

 In order to answer these questions, our research focuses on exploring and identifying the elements that define virtual communities and their status as learning and knowledge production environments. 

 The research stages are: (1) virtual communities identification and cartography (2) field work stage, consisting of a detailed study of 4-6 cases and data collection (focus groups, detailed interviews, document and multimodal evidence gathering), with subsequent analysis and interpretation.

The poster describes the first stage of identification and cartography of virtual communities. To this end, a mapping of communities where young Spanish people participated was conducted.

We used Paulston’s Social Cartography theory (Paulston, 2001) as an approach that allowed us to identify and map the differences, similarities, points of agreement and disagreement, both visible and invisible, among the communities, and to establish how they interact or interrelate. 

Roland Paulston (2001) understands the approach of social cartography as a standpoint that increases reflection capacity and apprehends the multiplicity of the subject of study, understanding the value of maps as spatial representations of knowledge standpoints and relations; entangled and intertwined rhizomatic representations (Deleuze and Guattari,1987). 

Method

The research requires a methodology that enables recapturing and visibilizing the knowledge of young people participating in virtual communities. For this purpose, the approach will follow the lines of the virtual ethnography principles (Hine, 2004 y 2005) and multi-sited ethnography (Falzon, 2009). However, during this first stage of identification and characterization of communities the approach was based on social cartography (Tello and Gorostiaga, 2009; Peters, 2001; Siekierska, 1995) and a methodology that combines textual analysis and visual mapping. It is worth pointing out that although social cartography is known as a fieldwork methodology and participatory and collaborative research tool (Torres, Gaona and Corredor, 2012), this research used it as an approach, as proposed by Cesar Tello and Jorge Gorostiaga (2009) following Rolland Paulson. The reasons were: (1) it assumes an epistemological standpoint of reality by refusing to understand “reality” as a unique, true and accurate representation (Peters, 2001) and (2), because it proposes a specific methodology that combines textual analysis and visual mapping in its development. Social cartography was used to assess the diversity of emerging communities, institutional actors and individuals that occupy said social environment, the way that these actors interact, what and how they are learning, and the interrelation of all these elements as a complex fabric that incorporates the uncertainty of its organization (Siekierska, 1995). An initial search was conducted targeting virtual communities with Spanish young people regardless of their language or interest. This choice has been made either by affinity or active participation of acquaintances. During this stage, a great diversity of communities was identified: (1) artistic and cultural topics, (2) Maker or do-it-yourself movements, (3) social participation and mobilization and post-materialistic expression; (4) communities of young creators, prosumers or advanced consumers (techsetters, trendsetters). In this this process 25 communities where chosen and classified based on deducted codes and categories, partly taken from the reviewed literature. This classification process followed some of the principles of Grounded Theory (Glaser y Strauss, 1967; Glasser, 1978; Wolcott, 1994 y Alonso, 1998). Initially, 12 categories and their sub-categories emerged, based on which visual maps where built following a rhizomatic and interconnected structured.

Expected Outcomes

The mapping methodology used, along with the in-depth analysis of the literature entailed a series of procedures that allowed for the identification and construction of a number of categories and classifications of the communities, leading to the creation of a visual map of virtual communities. With this, it is expected to unveil, not only the definitions and relevance of the categories, but also the multiple flow relations among the different elements in a dynamic manner (Tello and Gorostiaga, 2009). Understanding the way that virtual communities involving young people operate requires a holistic vision of the actors and spaces involved. Social cartography is a useful tool to evidence the multiple fields and points of agreement and disagreement. It is expected that social cartography will enable the identification- and eventually integration- of the different categories that characterize communities, and how they interact or interrelate, to view them as a gear in a system rather than separate elements. Finally, it must be pointed out that this cartography is undergoing a constant construction process, for it is impossible to reach final conclusions in relation to a reality that we have not gained full access to. For this reason, said cartography will be subject to changes, reorganizations, reformulations and movements throughout the development of the investigation, there being the possibility of new categories arising during the second project stage.

References

Alonso L (1998) La mirada cualitativa en sociología: una aproximación interpretativa. Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos. Deleuze G and Guattari F (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 1 edition (December 21, 1987). Mirmeapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Falzon MA (2009) Multi‐sited Ethnography. Theory, praxis and locality in contemporary research. Burlington: Ashgate. Glaser B and Strauss A (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Glaser B (1978) Theoretical sensitivity: advances in the methodology of grounded theory. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press. Hine C (2004) Etnografía virtual. Barcelona: UOC. Hine C (2005) Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. New York: Berg Publisher. Lave J and Wenger E (1991) Situated Learning: Letigimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univertity Press. Paulston R (2001) El espacio de la educación comparada y el debate sobre el posmodernismo. Propuesta Educativa 10 (23): 18-31. Peters M (2001) ¿Qué es el postestructuralismo?. Cuadernos de Pedagogía 4 (8): 39-66. Siekierska E (1995) From the task force on women in cartography to the ICA working group on gender and cartography: what we learned. In: National Resources Canada, Ottawa, Canadá, 2461-2470. Ottawa: Geomatics Canada. Available at: http://icaci.org/files/documents/ICC_proceedings/ICC1995/PDF/Cap480.pdf Tello C and Gorostiaga J (2009) El enfoque de la cartografía social para el análisis de debates sobre las políticas educativas. Práxis Educativa, Ponta Grossa 4(2): 159-168. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5212/PraxEduc.v.4i2.159168 Torres I, Gaona S and Corredor D (2012) Cartografía social como metodología participativa y colaborativa de investigación en el territorio afrodescendiente de la cuenca alta del río Cauca. Cuadernos de geografía, revista colombiana de geografía 21(2): 59-73. Wolcott H (1994) ‪Transforming Qualitative Data: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation‬. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications‬‬‬‬‬

Author Information

Sara Victoria Carrasco Segovia (presenting / submitting)
University of Barcelona, Spain.
Cristina Salazar (presenting)
Universitat de Barcelona
Bogotá
Cristina Alonso Cano
University of Barcelona, Spain.

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