| Digital networks continue to rise in popularity and become further integrated into our daily lives. As technologies continue to blend digital and physical realities, popular culture and its informal curricula are disseminated in new and profound ways. We have yet to determine if the transformative potential of digital networks will be realized, but it is clear that they serve as important platforms for the public pedagogies of digital culture that work to influence and habituate users into particular digital epistemologies and ways of engaging online.;Facebook is a digital platform on which users construct and mediate their online realities, where engagement brings with it various forms of power and control. Facebook's public pedagogy results in prescriptions for behavior and actions online that limit engagement. This dissertation examines the prevalent use of Facebook by college students, exploring the digital network as a potent site of informal learning. First, Facebook's public pedagogy is rhetorically analyzed and deconstructed to examine its form and function. Second, three college student's perspectives and experiences with Facebook are constructed as narratives in order to express the ways they make meaning of Facebook's public pedagogy. Third, the student narratives are interrogated and critically analyzed within the social context of Facebook's public pedagogy to show how particular ideologies and informal educative structures inform the use of Facebook. This dissertation concludes by advocating critical digital pedagogies that would equip users with the skills to engage learning and digital culture with a critical consciousness, and augment existing digital epistemologies. As applied, practical approaches to transforming informal education on digital networks, critical digital pedagogies employ the possibilities of a digital space where meaning is both determined, but also free to change, shift, and continually move. |
