This is why I find approaches like Ian Guest’s research into the potentials associated with Twitter in regards to teacher professional development interesting. It adds to the knowledge about the topic, but does not promise to be the whole knowledge.
📑 More than tools: who is responsible for the social dilemma?
It is necessary to re-frame social media as something more than a mere “tool”. Rather than simply leave it to former tech industry insiders to spell out the ills of social media in documentaries like The Social Dilemma, we must engage with thinkers from a diverse range of backgrounds to look to the historical conditions of social media’s origins, while always questioning the economics and cultural politics of its global dissemination. We must personally examine how our own thoughts and actions are subtly shaped by social media’s design, while taking time to listen to marginalized individuals and communities who are impacted the most by the violence produced through social media today. And by seeing technology as a relation, by sharing responsibility in this way, we lift the burden of fixing the problem from the individual user alone, and discard the moralizing discourses such a burden brings.
Niall Docherty pushes back on the argument made by The Social Dilemma that social media is designed to manipulate. He argues that the user does not act alone, instead it is a coming together of users and interfaces. In the end, it is always far more nuanced, with various socio-political factors, such as gender, race, and class inequities, adding to story.