Netnographic Study of Transmedia Communities around the Podcast: New Horizons in the Study of Digital Learning Ecologies

Abstract

The digital world is witnessing an explosion of learning ecologies shaped around the cybermedia. Cases such as podcasting, an emerging medium whose contents bring together virtual communities that interact horizontally, exchanging and co-constructing knowledge. Consequently, this paper addresses learning communities related to podcasting, through a reflective process, focused on reducing the confusion generated by the virtual nature of the object of study: Fragmented spaces of participation and peculiar spatial-temporal coordinates. To this end, netnography is used to conceptualize the virtual learning community and analyze its transmedia structure, distributed in multiple scenarios of social participation. The proposal can be extrapolated to other virtual communities and seeks to attract the educational community to digital environments that are within the scope of non-formal education.