Monthly Archives: November 2020

OLJ Task 2: The influence of technology on society

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Summarise what you know and think about the influence of technology on society in general and specifically on organisations.

Technology has changed the way we communicate, learn, and do business. It has made a multitude of daily processes, from checking the weather or booking accommodation, to paying our bills, easier and more convenient. Despite perceived negative impacts of technology on society – partisanship, mis-information and fake news, privacy issues, over-reliance on smart devices and erosion of communication skills (Nelson, 2017) and a fear of a further widening of the digital divide between tech controllers/users and underserved or under skilled members of society (Vogels, Rainie & Anderson, 2020), both society in general and organisations have benefited in a multitude of ways.

What are some of the main points organisations have to consider that they may not have had to consider in the past?

The Edutech industry has the potential to transform education but the current global health crisis has shown us that,  rather than offering blended learning with the support of highly qualified educators, in many cases, algorithmic digital learning tools have replaced face-to-face teaching entirely. Due to the urgency of the situation, many schools have had forsake an evidence-based strategy in their rush to implement technology-enabled learning (Lederman, 2020). When the situation stabilises, schools should see this as an opportunity to have to work out how to deal with “Transformative threats” and work on understanding both their own and broader ecosystems,  before investing in long-term technological change.

In order to develop a technology strategy, schools need to consider the Return on Investment (ROI) in terms of learning outcomes and potential added-value. Decision/policy makers also need to consider the level of professional development required to ensure that educators and students are receptive to, and equipped for a transition from existing, to new technology. A thorough understanding of the existing ecosystem within the organization will go a long way to alleviating potential bottlenecks or competition  between the old system and the new (Adner & Kapoor, 2016). Throughout the world, Many schools face infrastructural issues such as slow internet connections and outdated equipment. Even in tech-rich European societies there will be a long wait until the UK’s 2033 goal of nationwide full-fibre infrastructure is met (Department for Digital, Culture,Media & Sport).  In 2018, France expressly banned the use of WLAN in educational institutions and key findings of the latest ICILS (International Computer and Information Literacy Study),  show that students in Germany do not have broadband or WLAN or regular access to digital devices, severely limiting their ability to follow the curriculum and slowing their learning progress.

References

Adner, R., & Kapoor, R. (2016). Right tech, wrong time. Harvard Business Review, 94(11), 60-67.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. (2018, 23 July). Forging a 5G and full fibre broadband future for all. [Press release]. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/forging-a-full-fibre-broadband-and-5g-future-for-all#:~:text=The%20Future%20Telecoms%2Infrastructure%20Review,fibre%20broadband%20coverage%20across%20all

Fraillon, J., Ainley, J., Schulz, W., Friedman, T., & Duckworth, D. IEA. Preparing for life in a digital world. IEA. International computer and information literacy study 2018 international report. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38781-5

Lederman, D.  (2020, March 18). Will shift to remote teaching be boon or bane for online learning? Insidehighered. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/03/18/most-teaching-going-remote-will-help-or-hurt-online-learning

Nelson, J. Is technology making us lazy? (2017, May 15). Medium. https://medium.com/digital-society/is-technology-making-us-lazy-ec3a3e58140a

Van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & De Waal, M. (2018). Education. J. Van Dijck (Ed.), The platform society.  Retrieved from Oxford Scholarship Online. https://oxford-universitypressscholarship-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/view/10.1093/oso/9780190889760.001.0001/oso-9780190889760-chapter-7

Vogels, E. A., Rainie, L. & Anderson, J. (2020, June 30). Tech causes more problems than it solves. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/06/30/tech-causes-more-problems-than-it-solves/

OLJ Task 1: Social Media and Society

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Description and analysis of the article

“Tweeting along partisan lines: identity-motivated elaboration and presidential debates“ (Jennings et al. 2020) explores partisan social identification, how it develops, and how it influences both political views and candidate affiliation as expressed via social media. Published in the peer reviewed journal Social Media + Society, the authors, experts in the field of political communication from the Universities of Missouri and Kansas, describe the phenomenon of second screening, where members of the public use social media on a mobile device while consuming other types of media, for example a televised debate. Platforms such as Twitter facilitate live-tweeting, allowing viewers to become active content creators in real time – a particularly engaging, persuasive and informative form of user interaction.

Jennings et al. apply the Theory of Identity-Motivated Elaboration (TIME) to examine how a range of factors, including social identity and image, influence how voters evaluate political candidates and establish preferences. Additionally, second screening provides users with the cognitive engagement required to achieve what is called elaboration, or the ability to understand complex arguments.  Elaboration is improved when there is personal involvement and live-tweeting not only provides this personal involvement, it gives researchers with a way to measure evaluation (Jennings et al. 2017).

Do you agree with the authors? If not – why not?

While I agree that live-tweeting  improves information acquisition by elevating cognitive expenditure (thereby increasing elaboration), several questions remain. Firstly, does media-multitasking add or detract from learning?  According to a study (Gottfried et al. 2017), “social networking site (SNS) use overall correlates with increased knowledge of campaign issues and facts above and beyond the use of other sources of news media“. The flip-side is that the “differential learning occurring largely for knowledge that is favourable to one’s preferred candidate“, thereby supporting the hypothesis of Jennings et al.

More serious consequences for the future of social media in elaboration is the appearance of social media platforms purporting to be freer, non-censored alternatives to Facebook and Twitter. One such platform is Parler, a free iPhone app, which, in the days following the recent US Federal election, racked up nearly 1 million downloads in just five days.

The rise of social media sites such as MeWe, Gab and Parler, which range from conservative to extremist, give evidence to the theory that increasing levels of political segregation will lead to people to social media services designed to bring together like-minded users, creating what has been termed the “echo-chamber effect” (Cota et al, 2019), as Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble discusses in his TED talk.

 

 

References:

Cota, W., Ferreira, S. C., Pastor-Satorras, R., & Starnini, M. (2019). Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks. EPJ Data Science, 8(1), 1-13. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0213-9

Garimella,K., De Francisci Morales, G., Gionis, A. & Mathioudakis, M. (2018). Political discourse on social media: Echo chambers, gatekeepers, and the price of bipartisanship. In WWW 2018: The 2018 Web Conference, April 23–27, 2018, Lyon, France. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3178876.3186139

Gottfried, J., Hardy, B., Holbert, L., Winneg, K., & Jamieson, K. (2017). The changing nature of political debate consump- tion: Social media, multi-tasking, and knowledge acquisition. Political Communication, 34(2), 172–199. https://doi.org/10.1 080/10584609.2016.1154120

Jennings, F. J., Bramlett, J. C., McKinney, M. S., & Hardy, M. M. (2020). Tweeting along partisan lines: Identity-motivated elaboration and presidential debates. Social Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120965518