Our own worst enemies

Posted by José Picardo on July 18, 2012

Language is a defining feature of people. We are unique in Nature in being able to turn physical objects and abstract concepts into words and thus share ideas¹. The Internet provides our innate propensity for communication with means to engage in social interaction beyond the constraints of time and space, allowing us to engage in synchronous or asynchronous discussions that would be inconceivable otherwise.

The potential of this type of communication for education is already evident. Teachers and students had embraced blogs, online chats, fora and social networks to share and disseminate commonly interesting knowledge.

As a learner – and who isn’t? – blogging in particular has been instrumental in my own learning, which is continuously being constructed, modelled and re-modelled by reflecting on the social interaction provided by blogs such as this one and then feeding the newly constructed knowledge into further interaction, enabling me to learn in a divergent manner by providing the stimulus that allows me to pursue new ideas and explore new threads in a creative way².

So far, so good. But there are some problems. Firstly, linguistic communication relies on a plethora of visual and non-verbal cues and clues – a slight change in intonation or the raising of an eyebrow – that are simply absent from computer mediated communication.

These can be overcome by using emoticons and such like but, if – like me – you don’t populate your blog posts and forum or comment contributions with smilies and LOLs, there is always the constant risk of misinterpretation. For example, I once had a comment removed from a forum discussion by a moderator who didn’t like the tone in my comment. In fact, the tone had been assigned to the comment by the reader, not the writer.

Secondly, we employ social conventions when interacting online that differ widely from ordinary social conventions and to which, shockingly, we seem to be growing accustomed. On the internet – as the old adage goes – nobody knows you’re a dog but it also allows everyone to adopt a different persona.

Anonymity is arguably one of the Internet’s main strengths and freedom of speech is one of our most revered rights, and quite right too. However, the distancing effect of anonymity allows many to debase online discussion and debate by emboldening them to interact with others in such a way that would be unthinkable in real life, as is perfectly illustrated in this video:

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws_ywYMSQOc']

Rudeness has become an inherent feature of online discussion. This is a shame. The ability to explore and discuss topics in a dialectic manner, in which views are challenged constructively, is being sapped away from discussion boards, online newspaper comments threads and blogs by people with names like MontyPython or MrBig who say things online they would not dare say to your face.

I find it very peculiar we should let behaviour go unchallenged online that would not be tolerated otherwise. I can’t imagine MrBig or MontyPython being that rude to you face-to-face or even over the phone.

There is no need for any of this. There is an alternative to the current, accepted model. We need to create an environment that fosters exploratory talk, in which participants challenge the opinions of others with their own ideas and opinions. An environment that stimulates higher order processes, such as self-reflection, knowledge application, decision making, criticism and revision of concepts and solutions³.

We don’t need thoughtless belittling, ridiculing and abuse. We ought to know better. No wonder then that schools feel so uneasy about the social Internet, if the very people our students look up to aren’t able to provide them with appropriate models of behaviour. We are our own worst enemies.

Many thanks to Bisgraphic for the photograph.