How Social Media Changes Authority
The top-down, authoritarian model found today in most classrooms and work places looks very different from the model many people experience when they learn online. The classroom’s hierarchical approach, with the sage on the stage, and the workplace environment, filled with experts, requires (and, ultimately demands) passivity and deference on the part of the learner. Informal, interest-driven networked learning (i.e. communities of practice), with its access to large stores of information and variety of opinion, on the other hand, takes a much different view of authority. It’s usually peer-based, largely democratic, meritocratic, often creates dissonance due to variety and demands evaluation. Knowing what we do about active learning, one would seem clearly superior to the other.
Tim Clydesdale, in an article titled “Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology” (The Chronicle of Higher Education), quotes one of his students, “I think this access to information seriously undermines this generation’s view of authority, especially traditional scholastic authority.” The recently published study Living and Learning with New Media states, “Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads.” Online for several years now, students are deciding how to define expertise on their own terms and it looks nothing like what they are seeing in the classroom. Too few schools and workplaces are taking advantage of the power of peer-based learning while limiting access to the greater amounts of expertise found outside the institution. Employees today, many frustrated by the inefficient, linear, bloated information systems in their offices, are sidestepping corporate policy in order to move beyond the company’s firewall, accessing the tools and networks they have become familiar with in their own personal lives.
Many learners, especially those who are participating in communities of practice, are more accepting of an authority that comes from the bottom up as opposed to from the top down. Credibility and reputation in networked publics is earned by high-quality, active participation. In many cases, each contribution can be rated by participants, and the most prolific can earn titles such as “top reviewer”. This network-produced evaluation, coming from the bottom up, not only looks much different from what is happening in the classroom or boardroom, but also motivates differently. The Living and Learning with New Media study found, “Our cases demonstrate that some of the drivers of self-motivated learning come not from institutionalized “authorities” setting standards and providing instruction, but from youth observing and communicating with people engaged in the same interests, and in the same struggles for status and recognition, as they are.” The same study later describes a writer’s heightened sense of authenticity that comes from peer feedback as opposed to school evaluations: “It’s something I can do in my spare time, be creative and write and not have to be graded,” because, “you know how in school you’re creative, but you’re doing it for a grade so it doesn’t really count?” Opening up learning environments to genuine audiences seems like a worthy goal since it allows for a variety of feedback, often from peers, who by virtue of joining the conversation, show an extra-ordinary interest in the material–just the kind of person many would want to be evaluating their work.
In an age when anyone can publish, how do networked learners and information workers determine authority? Who do they trust? What information is deemed high-quality? Clay Shirky points out that when mass publishing was one way, top-down, filtering of information happened at the source of publication. We relied on editors and publishers to be the authority. Today, learners and information workers need a new skill set in order to effectively filter at the point of consumption. Interestingly enough, some of the best ways of determining authority are evolving from social media that allows aggregated user input such as voting and rating. Those people who know how to develop effective personal learning and professional networks will be at a great advantage when it comes to evaluating authority. Their networks, tailored to their needs and interests, will help them filter and evaluate at the point of consumption.
Some companies and institutions are starting to understand that in this era of social media, it’s necessary to change the rules of engagement. Social media has the power to quickly drive your idea to large audiences in ways that are very authentic and powerful–although at times, unexpected and unintended. Ignoring the bottom-up rules of today’s online playing fields could cost an organization a lot of social capital.
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