I’m doing some work next month with some folks on social networking, and one of the elements that I’m thinking a great deal about, thanks to a colleague‘s suggestion, is how we can help educators to read social networks as texts. #

I have a hunch that one can read a network like one reads any other text.  That said, though, I’m finding that it’s a bit harder to see a network than it is to see a simpler, perhaps more linear text. #

Specifically, I’m trying to design an activity that encourages some rhetorical analysis of the networks that educators and others are using to share information. #

In layman’s terms, I’m hoping to generate a list of questions that folks can use as they read through networks to help them identify what the networks are communicating, how they’re communicating what they’re communicating, and how those messages are delivered. #

I’m wondering what questions you would ask readers/participants to think about or look for as they work their way through a particular network or networks.  What do you think we should be helping our students to think about as they read and create their own networks?  I’d also be curious to hear your response to this general idea.  I’m discovering that as I try to draft questions, I find myself using language about networks that I think is better used to describe group or community characteristics.  Worth doing? #

Here are a couple of questions that I think are pretty important – I’d be really curious to hear yours in the comments: #

1.  Who are the nodes in the network that you are reading/analyzing?  Where do you see boundaries of membership in this network?  How do you know they exist? (Self-identified or apparent to readers?) #

2. How are they connected?  From what perspective are you reading the network – how are you seeing the connections? How might another reader see those connections?  The same?  Differently?  How do you know? #

3.  What practices or beliefs are communicated through the network?   Are these explicit?  Implicit?  What methods of communication are privileged in the network? Under or unvalued?  How do you know? #