Social Media Now Has a Past — Can We Learn from Our Mistakes?
A Q&A with Gardner Campbell
The history of social media is both very brief and very recent. Most applications initially appeared in the first decade of the 21st century. Despite all the enthusiasm and hopefulness surrounding the social media applications of the day, we now find ourselves looking back on dreams that, for the most part, didn't deliver.
Gardner Campbell, an associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and a first-generation social media researcher asks, "Where did the choices get made, especially those that we didn't know we were making at the time?" Campbell says if we can understand that, then maybe we can make better choices moving forward.
Campbell wants to give the prospect of making better choices a chance in the realm of social media. In fact, he's challenging his students in a brand-new course this coming fall to examine what they don't yet know about social media and suggest new strategies to help us all make better decisions in the future.
"If we can grasp what happened, maybe we can make better choices in the future." —Gardner Campbell
Mary Grush: You're going to be teaching a new course in the fall called The Rise of Social Media. What will you present to start students off on their exploration of this topic?
Gardner Campbell: That's a great question that one has to think about really hard; otherwise it will be like you're trying to boil the ocean.
I'll focus on specific platforms — I guess you could call them instances or manifestations of social media platforms. How did they emerge? What did they accomplish? And we'll look at these not only as technological accomplishments but also in terms of the ways in which they flourished: An example would be citizen journalism in the wake of 9/11.
So I'll talk about blogging, its history, and what is meant by a Weblog. We'll look at Wikipedia in great detail — policies, directions, and the life of that culture. Of course, we'll turn our attention to YouTube and to Facebook. And underneath all of those things, we'll examine the technology that made the Web widely usable and paved the way for its exponential growth: the first really reliable search engine, Google. And finally, we'll land for a bit on Twitter. I can't possibly cover everything — but these are the big platforms that made huge differences, both obvious ones and more subtle shifts in our world, in what we called at the time "Web 2.0."
Grush: Alright. I understand that's the what. But how will students reach a deeper understanding for themselves, of the significance of these social media? Can you tap into your own experiences to offer them models — maybe by showing them issues or challenges confronting you, that may open a door to their own questioning?
Campbell: Sure. I continue to teach fully online, and I'm always looking at counterintuitive things: how we can think about old things in new ways.
Grush: What are some examples?
Campbell: The idea of scaling is one. When you have no physical classroom, you might think, "Why not make class size larger and larger?" But a lot of learning has to do with establishing presence, and there has to be some realization of relationships — so there's a lot to think about there. Another idea is the ongoing problem of digital literacy — where higher education is, where our students are… What I see in my own practice can open the doors for many discussions. Still another example concerns me with the consequences of what we imagine about networks — Do you think of the Internet as an information superhighway, or a collection of communities, or a network of networks? And what are the dangers of changing our concepts of the network? Thinking about networks connects you with a whole range of wider questions. And those very questions may be relevant, too, in the context of examining social media.
One might group all these questions under the larger category of "communications philosophy" — an area in which my interests are just as much about shared creativity as about Web science, if not more so.
Grush: Are you anticipating useful discussions about social media? Do you think your students will be opening up discussions in this class that you might think of as constructive? Or…
Campbell: Oh, I'm probably creating this new course at exactly the wrong time! Obviously social media has become the 'cockroach that ate Cincinnati' — apparently taking over our lives and creating all sorts of terrible problems. Which, of course in several ways it has. So the discussions might seem to follow a path of destruction.
But part of the point of the course is to usher students through a period of recent history, a history that they don't know very well, a recent history that they've missed because they were too young to live through it as I did.
In this course I want to think through the rise of social media with them, trying to consider all that happened, rather than merely holding on to the most popular social media today. For example, my students may at first think social media is TikTok and Instagram. But I'll ask them, "What about blogging?" Blogging was supposed to be an extraordinary way for everyone to have a voice. Yet at least in my experience, students have little to no experience with blogs or any kind of "feed" that isn't generated for them algorithmically.
Students have little to no experience with blogs or any kind of "feed" that isn't generated for them algorithmically.
The rise of social media was taking place in the first decade of the 21st century, with blogging and YouTube and Wikipedia and Flickr and Twitter… All these things and more were seen as hopeful, even Facebook. I don't think students yet understand these applications, and newer ones, in the context of a whole history of social media.
Grush: And during this brief, recent history, how did some social media applications get acceptance while others faltered?
Campbell: That's a good direction for your questions. Where did these choices get made? Perhaps we didn't really know we were making choices at the time. Still, if we can grasp what happened, maybe we can make better choices in the future. Can we learn from the past?
And what mistakes has higher education made in terms of how it models effective, just, and humane interaction, learning, and co-creation on the Internet — or perhaps, in terms of how it has not modeled those things?
We are finally at a point where the spread of social media has a history. Social media now has a past — Can we learn from our mistakes?
We are finally at a point where the spread of social media has a history.
Grush: Do we need to assume that all the choices we made were mistakes?
Campbell: Of course not. But the same connections that brought us the swift and timely documentation of the COVID-19 virus — and that initial DNA sequencing that was shared over the Internet — are the same connections that also bring us serious misinformation, and, worst of all, disinformation. So I think it's less a matter of correcting our mistaken beliefs and more a matter of working to understand how to make better choices.
Choices brought us to this place. Until we understand those choices, we're not going to be able to think clearly about what choices might get us to a different place.
Choices brought us to this place. Until we understand those choices, we're not going to be able to think clearly about what choices might get us to a different place.
Grush: Will you actually be able to answer the question, definitively, of how to make better choices?
Campbell: Again, of course not. But I do want to help get the question to a state of informed energy so that insights become available. That's what I do as a teacher. The students must do the rest, to the best of their ability.
[Editor's note: Gardner Campbell's course trailer for The Rise of Social Media can be viewed online.]