Conversations on Facebook
My husband Steve and I recently returned from a mission trip to Haiti involving a team of medical and dental personnel and educators. We were there during the earthquake that devastated the capital city, Port-au-Prince, and experienced the ripple effect of that in the southern part of the nation. We were ministering in a small town 130 miles west of the capital so only felt the tremors but concerns for safety, transportation, and communication were still part of our experience. We managed to get word out to our families and friends via the missionaries that we were ok but it wasn’t until we returned to the mission station that we really began connecting to our loved ones. Fortunately, the Internet was still operational and we began an intense and engaged interaction via the social networking site, Facebook. We were able to assure people that all was well with us, we were safe, and we were in good hands. We felt the concern on the part of our families in the U.S. as well as the expressions of love, support, and prayer. While we were a world away, we very much felt connected to those back home. We clearly felt their urgency to have us home and safe on solid ground. To be certain the reunion we had with our families and friends upon our eventual return to the U.S. couldn’t be substituted by Facebook. But to suggest that we felt disconnected or in some sense isolated from those folks who were hundreds of miles away is simply not the case.
There are some who would challenge the notion that the Internet (and other technological media) can sustain communities or social ties. Di Petta (1998) and Hudson, (1997) have suggested that with the advent of the Internet, people still feel isolated and alone. Others (Ebersole and Woods, 2001) suggest that virtual community is simply an imitation of real socialization and cannot replace the value of organic connectedness.
A study by the Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey challenges these notions and suggests that sites such as Facebook may in fact provide opportunities for people to not only sustain but create significant groups and community. The Pew article reports that “only 6% of the adult population has no one with whom they can discuss important matters or who they consider to be “especially significant” in their life.” The Pew work determined that a majority (71%) of those who participate in social networking sites report that at least one of their online “friends” is someone of great influence to them. Contrary to previously-held notions, the Pew work reveals that Internet users are more likely to engage in social activity in physical communities.
Community is not necessarily restricted to a quantifiable location but can include a qualitative component as well. The Facebook community has been affected on many different levels by postings online. It would be fair to say, judging by the responses, that pictures Facebook users have posted online emotionally affect some. Others have been energized to go to Haiti and help in the relief efforts. Most are intellectually challenged by what they read. Some of my Facebook friends were able to get updates from and about loved ones. Comparing the response of my campus to the online community, there has been a greater degree of reaction and active engagement of the latter.
Developing community-based models for theological distance education requires the realization that technology alone cannot create or maintain human relationships and should not replace them. The focus should be on technology that encourages individuals to come together in community. The relationships that have begun here on our campus as well as those forged online continue to develop long after graduation, in part from interaction on Facebook. Many of our students simply cannot return for alumni gatherings. They do however meet on a regular basis through the medium of Facebook to share prayer concerns, encourage one another, engage with one another, and simply continue those relationships. I think we have to begin shifting the conversation about technology in the classroom to ways in which that technology can sustain over time the community that has been developed because of the classroom.
This article is good in its focus on how online community can support real community, such as the community of a classroom. However, I don’t think much thought is being given to the role of other real communities (family, friends, church) in classroom communities. My article on situated learning in the next Christian Education Journal gives a few applications that help us to think about these roles.