Investigating the Process of Learning and Relationship Building on the Social Media

Abstract

Technology which plays a crucial role on balancing human actors and non-human actors provides a public platform for people to socialize and learn across time and space in the process of information sharing. The purpose of this research is to see the practice of learning on the social media. Besides, through collaboration, relationship building is also crucial in social learning process. In order to facilitate learning, people also tend to use some strategies to establish and maintain the relations. In this case, learning and relationship construction couldn’t be separated in the process of knowledge construction. Thus, this research explores the social learning process on the Social Networking Service (SNS) from the following two perspectives, learning perspective and the social relation perspective. The purpose of this research is to answer the following questions: What and how can people learn through social media? How are social relations constructed on the social media? My research data mainly includes online chatting and qualitative interviews, collected from two SNS applications which are” Sina Weibo” and “Hellotalk”. The data represents communication among people from diverse backgrounds, reflecting interaction particularly between my participants and me, and with others. In this study, I explore the learning process on the social media and the relationship construction at a micro level utilizing qualitative methods. Theoretically, this research adds knowledge to our understanding of social behavior online in general and of the process of learning and social relationship building on the social media in particular. Methodologically, I also provide a qualitative micro level model for the analysis of such social practice.