I was intrigued to see that in Canada they are reporting thatthe use of social networking and other web tools such as Twitter and Facebook is damaging the quality of students' English skills. Apparently academics at Waterloo University, Ontario and Simon Fraser University, British Columbia are finding that many students (a third and a tenth, respectively) are failing at English, i.e. not up to the standard required for academic writing. And they are blaming young people's use of these social networking tools for this problem.
"Emoticons, happy faces, sad faces, cuz, are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at Simon Fraser."
At Coventry University in the UK, however, researchers have found the exact opposite, as reported by the BBC a few days ago. In their study of 8-12 year olds they found that children who regularly use the abbreviated language of text messages are actually improving their ability to spell correctly.
Whether or not you like either of the two songs that have been battling out for the Christmas number 1 spot this week - and whether or not you watch the programme X-Factor, you probably haven't been able to miss the media coverage of the story. It seems to have been social media - in this case FaceBook - that facilitated the campaign for Rage Against the Machine to be the Christmas number 1. You could say that Jon and Tracy Morter, who started the campaign, have been incredibly successful and proved that a grassroots movement, with the help of social media, can topple the "establishment". Which is a good thing - probably...
I do wonder though if it's not just the good old British grump at work. This campaign wasn't about supporting a great song (it isn't, particularly), it was about halting the success of Joe McElderry (X-Factor winner) and sending a message to Simon Cowell. In other words it was acting out of a negative impulse - to stop something. Of course, I can appreciate the idea of challenging the automatic X-factor-equals-Christmas-number-one that has been the case for the last few years, and approve the idea of a genuine battle for number 1. But it would have been easier to put one's support behind a more worthy contender: the band are even signed to the same record company as Joe McElderry.
Whether or not you like either of the two songs that have been battling out for the Christmas number 1 spot this week - and whether or not you watch the programme X-Factor, you probably haven't been able to miss the media coverage of the story. It seems to have been social media - in this case FaceBook - that facilitated the campaign for Rage Against the Machine to be the Christmas number 1. You could say that Jon and Tracy Morter, who started the campaign, have been incredibly successful and proved that a grassroots movement, with the help of social media, can topple the "establishment". Which is a good thing - probably...