Social Media in Teacher Education

Background

Social media is not easily defined (Mandiberg, 2012) as it is a “moving target” where “it sometimes feels as if the social media landscape changes too quickly to fully grasp and leaves scholars permanently lagging behind” (Hogan & Quan-Haase, 2010, p. 309). Although social media definitions and classifications can be ambiguous and fluid, there are similarities among the types of experiences various mediums encourage. Social media is generally characterized by digital platforms where users can create, share, and interact with content and each other in online collaborative spaces. Accessibility and low barriers to participation typify social media tools, and the content created and/or shared by users includes text, photographs, videos, audio files, or some combination thereof.

While terms like Web 2.0, participatory media, social networking, or authentic media have been used both synonymously and distinctively, the term “social media” is used in this chapter for two reasons. First, “social media” is a broad term that did not arbitrarily limit the review of literature. Second, the “social” component distinguishes various mediums and uses. For example, while some Web 2.0 sites provide an accessible digital space for content (e.g., YouTube, blogs), not all such sites encourage or lead to frequent and substantive interactions in comment sections or elsewhere. On the other hand, social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook often lend themselves to more interactions as posts can lead to numerous “likes,” “comments,” or “shares” from fellow users. However, while a medium can encourage certain behaviors, it does not determine them and the specific technology tool is often less important than the quality of content and interactions crafted by users.