Networked Publics in Unofficial School Space
Abstract: Social networking sites (SNSs) have changed the everyday life of children and young people in media-rich countries. SNSs offer a range of possibilities for children to perform, express identity and communicate with peers. Social networking is networked publics (boyd, 2014) that make structurally enforced borders of intimacy and privacy almost impossible. At schools the use of SNSs makes school boundaries more permeable and school space more public, breaks traditional social order and creates new time-space for learning. The new space where digital media and SNSs are used in schools is called unofficial school space (Kupiainen, 2013), which means alternative social ordering with connections outside of the school. Unofficial school space is a challenge for teachers. In this paper I will discuss what this means for teachers as border intellectuals, a term borrowed from critical pedagogy and which helps to study shifting borders of knowledge, power and culture at school.