The network is the message: Social networks as teaching tools

Abstract

This chapter draws from a pilot project at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano consisting in using an electronic forum in a political science class. Students were challenged to respond to a ‘prompt’ from the instructor on some topical issues in EU politics and to engage in informed discussion on topics addressed in class. We argue that beyond the content-specific elements involved, the forum was designed to train students in such practices as discussing and debating issues that feature prominently in current EU politics. The forum prescribes a method of discussion and critique and presents itself as a miniature of the democratic ‘public sphere’. This chapter refers to Jürgen Habermas’s seminal studies on the notion of ‘public sphere’ and shows how the EU public sphere is largely shaped by the new electronic media. This chapter bears on Gretchen van Dyke’s chapter on civic education in this volume and connects current issues and challenges in higher education with the ever more relevant problem of the so-called democratic deficit of the EU. It concludes with an analysis of electronic media that draws on Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of the particular status of messages in complex societies.