Special Issue of Information & Learning Sciences
Announcement
New Double Special Issue of Information & Learning Sciences!
Check out the special double issue of Information and Learning Sciences: “Learning with social media in an algorithmic age: Opportunities and challenges for education”
Co-Guest Editors:
- Christine Greenhow (Michigan State University)
- K. Bret Staudt Willet (Florida State University)
- Jeffrey P. Carpenter (Elon University)
Social media platforms have taken up central roles in modern life in the last two decades and have been found in a range of scenarios and contexts to serve a mediating and facilitating role in both incidental and purposeful learning (Greenhow et al., 2020; Lu and Lee, 2019; Woodford et al., 2023).
Over the years, these platforms have increasingly relied upon artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to provide users with curated content and connections. Social media algorithms can amplify the spread of information that is accurate or inaccurate, sorting and ranking content at a speed and scale impossible for humans alone. These algorithms can expand, disrupt, and constrain how, when, where and from whom people learn, raising both opportunities and challenges for education.
The 12 conceptual and empirical articles in this special double issue explore the opportunities and challenges of learning with social media in this algorithmic age. The articles address a range of social media platforms (i.e. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, Reddit). Four articles address social media broadly. The empirical articles were based on studies conducted in the USA, Brazil and Spain. Moreover, the papers embrace a variety of theoretical perspectives, including socio-ecological learning theory, constructivism, connectivism, emergent collective sensemaking, affinity spaces, psychological well-being, technoskepticism and culturally relevant pedagogy. Of the empirical papers, eight employ a qualitative approach, one article adopts a quantitative design, one is a mixed-methods study and one article employs a technological audit. The majority of papers address informal learning with social media. Check them out!