March 2015 – Page 2 – Learning Aloud

Online bystander apathy

All students who have taken a Social Psychology course have been exposed to the work of Darley and Latane on bystander apathy. The study followed the infamous public murder of Kitty Genovese. Research following the event attempted to understand why no one had come to her aid. By staging simulated events under different conditions, the research evaluated various hypotheses.

Obviously, bullying and cyberbullying provide similar circumstances and bystander apathy is often offered as an explanation for lack of intervention. Why are attackers not reprimanded by others? Note that encouraging peers to intervene online is frequently offered as a possible solution.

A recent study (I believe unpublished at present) has taken a similar experimental approach to studying cyberbullying (Dillon). The results are very similar to the old Darley and Latane research and just as disheartening. However, the manipulative methodology does offer a useful approach for evaluating the impact of whatever techniques are used to encourage peer support.

Off the corporate grid

I like Dan Gilmor’s writing because he thinks a lot like me. I admit it. I hope this commonality does not diminish how seriously you take my suggestion that you read his work.

A recent post to Medium explains why Gilmor is attempting to become more independent from Apple, Google and Microsoft. The post explains the steps he is taking to explore just how much separation is possible.

If you find the Gilmor post intriguing, I recommend his book MediActive. The book and associated web site came before the post and you can see how the actions described in the blog might follow from the observations made in the book. I am not to the point of taking the actions described in the blog post – my attitude might be described as “do not become dependent on any one service”.

Gilmor offers his book from the web site under a creative commons license. I purchased the book through Amazon and learned about the creative commons option on my Kindle, but supporting content creators is a good thing. Like I said, Gilmor and I share many values. His book is augmented by online resources. He argues that a book alone will not be able to keep up with rapid developments in a field. This is one of arguments Cindy and I used in proposing a hybrid approach to the latest edition of our textbook . Gilmor proposes that we are not informed by reading along endorsing the value of production as well as consumption. Our notion of learning aloud (authoring to learn) is very similar. And, Gilmor argues for an open Internet – supporting net neutrality, reasonable interpretation of copyright rights, and freedom from dependence on any given set of corporate hardware, software, or access providers. The book explores each of these topics in detail.

Gilmor is a journalist and frames his arguments as applied to his profession. It strikes me that journalism and education share a great deal especially the way Gilmor interprets journalism. Learning in both cases is not a simple matter of consumption.