Socio-Cultural Theories and Online Social Networking in Australia

March 27, 2012 - PRLog -- The popularity of OSN has increased significantly in a relatively short period of time. This is
evidenced by the increased membership to MySpace which has grown from 4.9 million in
November 2004 to 26.7 million in November 2005 (Read/WriteWeb 2007), to over 70 million
registered users in 2006 (Snyder et al., 2006). Statistics for Facebook similarly suggest
widespread growth. Trends indicate that Facebook users are increasing 3% per week with a
143% increase in page views at 15.8 billion over the period May 2006-May2007 (Techcrunch
2007). It is currently reported that these two very public and popular social networking sites
are attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each month (Techcrunch
2008). As at April 2009, Facebook is identified as the fifth most popular website and
MySpace the tenth most popular site globally (Alexa 2009a)
1
.
In Australia MySpace and Facebook are consistently listed in the top 10 most popular
websites in the country. As at September 2008, Hitwise (2008)
2
ranks Facebook third and
MySpace seventh in terms of market share visits. In April 2009, Alexa (2009b) identified
Facebook as the third most popular site in Australia, while MySpace came in tenth position.
The popularity of these sites makes them a valuable context for exploring the nature of 21
st
century socialisation and, in turn, the phenomenon of online identity creation. In understanding this phenomenon it is useful to consider two socio-cultural perspectives of learning:
Situated Cognition and Activity Theory. Socio-cultural theories of learning value the
communication of knowledge through social practices and the opportunity to engage in various communities to learn with and from others. The link between online identity and
socio-cultural theories of learning arises from widespread use of a culturally valued tool (in
this case social networking websites) which provides a context for the individual to learn how
to construct an online identity which engages him/her with the collective OSN community.
Amongst other key principles, Situated Cognition is concerned with the notion of
‘communities of practice’ whereby learning is tied to one’s desire to engage with, and
become an active member of society (Lave & Wenger 1991). This could be viewed as a
process of enculturation where, from an early age, people adopt behaviours and belief
systems of their social groups and eventually start acting in accordance with their norms
(Brown et al., 1989). To a certain extent this learning occurs as more capable individuals
(masters) expose their practices to novice learners (apprentices) (Brown et al., 1989).
Learning occurs as a result of participation in real-life contexts and so, engagement in
authentic activity is heralded as a fundamental component in any investigation of human
experience (Bannon 1997; Brown et al., 1989; Herrington & Oliver 2000). Taking account of
principles underpinning Situated Cognition, research into OSN must relate directly to
experience, as it occurs in the daily lives of social networking site users. From this
perspective OSN can be explored as a process of enculturation, where the user actively
engages in the practices of a global online community – learning from this community and
subsequently contributing to the community.

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