Nick's EDC blog

This week I have been developing my further reading into digital culture and community, and especially interested in Deuze (2006) discussion of the ‘core components’ of digital culture (participation, remediation and bricolage).  I’ve also been getting immersed into my chosen MOOC community, exploring the course content, discussion board threads, and eliciting views and experiences from community members.  Halfway through the week my discussion thread asking for students’ comments was removed by the course organisers.  This was a real shame as I was getting some really useful data from it.  However, it reveals something very important about how the ‘open’ community environment remains ‘policed’ by those delivering the teaching content.

My data and experiences thus far are causing me to question some of the arguments, especially those within Stewart (2013), that MOOCs such as those delivered by Coursera could offer a ‘trojan horse’ for community (xMOOC) participation.  From what I’ve seen in the course, the tutor’s knowledge and position is still privileged above those of students, and attempts by community members to develop ‘bottom-up’ initiatives seem, in the main, to have fallen on deaf ears.  On the other hand, I have found some of the typologies of online community participation laid out in Kozinets (e.g. around bonding, geeing, cruising) useful in explaining some of the discussion forum data within the MOOC  -this is an area I plan to explore more next week.

Finally, following the Google Hangouts session on Friday I’ve been thinking about how to present my ethnographic artefact.  I’m thinking the best way to do this may be in ‘machine language’ i.e. as a Python programme.  This could be read from file or (ideally) run as an interactive program using python 3.2 – something to explore more over the coming weeks!

References

Deuze, M. (2006) Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture. The Information Society 22: 63-75.