When working through this week’s assigned readings and video, I felt as if there was a different approach and purpose for each.  In Raquel Recuero’s google chat with fellow colleagues, it appeared to be information sharing about youths in Brazil in regards to social media and having a voice.  Whereas, Saskia Sasses’s was a persuasive talk very politically driven with a certain agenda implied.

            The tools used in both of the talks appear to be the same, the Internet, blogging and social media.  The issues, from my understanding, are also the same, which was most clearly stated in the reading by Mark E. Kann, “online talk tends to be undisciplined, intolerant, and superficial rather than deliberative.  Furthermore publicly sponsored web sites rarely take advantage of the Internet’s interactive possibilities.” (Kann, p1/3)  Another issues facing both talk was how it relates to distribution of political participation.  (Varnellis, video)  In my opinion at the core of this issue stands the cultural and critical dimension literacy (Lankshear and Knobel, p175), the culture of politics is trying to embed itself into the digital culture, which hasn’t fully matured enough to be able to articulate its values of the culture.  It creates an interesting paradigm.  For example, Raquel indicated that many of the topics were for the first time being discussed openly in media because of social media. Yet then in Brazil, similar to some institutions in the US, social media is forbidden in academic institutions.  (Brazil, video)

            I was intrigued with the Google hang out with Raquel and colleagues, I felt it was a very real discussions of the current issues and phenomena with emergence and increased fluency in digital literacy.  However, I didn't feel the same with Sassen’s blog.   It was heavily laden with jargon and ideas communicated in a complex manner which led to less contextual force personally, however it may have been a successful delivery based on her target audience.

           

 

Lankshear, C. and Knoble, M. (2011 ). Literacies: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives.  New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

 

Kann, M. (n.d.) Networed Publics: More or Less Democracy in the Internet Age.  Retrieved on October 14, 2013 from http://networkedpublics.org/digital_democracy/more_or_less_democracy_in_the_internet_age

 

Varnellis, K. (2012) Saskia Sassen: Networks, Power, and Democracy.  [video file] Retrieved on October 16, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpw1GpHzAbc&feature=youtu.be

 

Brazil, J. (n.d.)  Raquel Recuero - Digital Youth, Social Movements, and Democracy in Brazil.  [video file] Retrieved on October 15, 2013 from http://connectedlearning.tv/raquel-recuero-digital-youth-social-movements-and-democracy-brazil