Social media in education contexts: implicationsfor critical media literacy and ethical challenges for teachers and educational institutions in Namibia

Abstract

The proliferation of social media and its use by students has raised a lot of research interest in attempts to seek ways of appropriating these new technologies for instructional and learning purposes. Critical media literacy deals with the critical analysis of various popular culture media in terms of their ideological and power implications, as well as the meaning of their messages. Although critical media literacy views new media as beneficial in their democratised nature, concerns remain about students’ ability to decipher and analyse the content that they both consume and create through social media. The two can be termed critical consumption and creation respectively. Similarly, social media poses potential ethical challenges for the teaching profession and for educational institutions. This is a qualitative research that employed the Phenomenography method where data was collected through focus group interviews. The paper sheds light on student teachers’ current social media practices. Analysing student teachers’ social media practices through the lens of critical media literacy, the paper highlights potential ethical challenges that are encountered while using social media in educational contexts. Recommendations include critical and ethically considerate approaches to using social media in educational contexts, as well as methods of incorporating the teaching critical media literacy skills in teacher education curricula.