Learning to Read the Internet

Understanding Social Media in the Library and Information Field

Comments as a New Agora?

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Christian Hendriks

Here’s an idea: on social media, librarians could provide opportunities for conversations rather than take part in them.

The Problem with YouTube Comments

Screenshot of a Khan Academy YouTube video comments section.

As I mentioned in my CV, I am studying YouTube comments as a research assistant to Eric Meyers. One thing I’ve learned is that YouTube’s comments space does not have many affordances: it lacks easy navigation, it has fewer sorting options, and so on. For this reason, it can be difficult to have a conversation in the YouTube comments. This is something Eric found in his research before I came aboard: there isn’t much discussion in the comments, and what discussion there is tends to be an entrenched argument between two participants. There aren’t many rich conversations.
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My Social Media C.V.

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Christian Hendriks

Welcome to Learning to Read the Internet. This is the first post in a course blog. If you want to know more about me and what to expect of this blog, check out the About page; for the time being, it might help you to know that I have a BA and an MA in English Literature, and that on this blog I intend to think about how I can read social media: what does Facebook mean? Can users make it mean something different depending on how they use it? What is the relationship between user and program? If my past behaviour is any indication, expect a lot of theoretical questions.

But for the moment, I’m going to offer a different kind of C.V.: my past use of social media.

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