Information literacy on Social Networking Sites: issues and challenges from teenagers’ uses
Résumé
Statistics show that social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook or Twitter, are widely used, especially by teens who were among the earliest adopters of such web-based services. So far, research has mainly focused on communication and the social uses of these SNS. However, further research is needed to understand why and how young people use SNS, given the availability and increasingly popular nature of information and comments on user-generated content. Furthermore, teens, as information searchers, frequently rely on easily accessible sources even though the trustworthiness of information is questionable (Flanagin Metzger, 2010; Biddix, 2011). Within this study, we underline the importance of considering how young people may use SNS as information sources for everyday life information as well as for academic and school-oriented information. This relates to the definition of SNS as an “information ground” (Counts Fischer, 2010) and to the political dimension of the concept of literacy (Barton Hamilton, 1998).