Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to depict the combination of dominant and vernacular practices of adult learners that occurs through the world’s most popular online social networking site (SNS) in the volunteering domain. The rise in digital technologies, especially social networking sites such as Facebook, has also led to thriving online literacies or computer-mediated communication as a communal resource within the volunteering community.
This chapter will introduce participants’ perceptions of computers, the Internet, Facebook and what the Facebook platform looks like. Finally, the cases of four writers will be investigated further, concentrating in particular on using Facebook for social purposes and their different perceptions of the definitions of ‘Facebook friends’. Based on the analysis of images and written texts on Facebook, with semi-structured interviews for 2 years, I presented how and why individual adult volunteers treated friendship in the digital context within this uniformed group as a social world and Hong Kong society at large. Volunteers are engaged in a volunteering environment full of print-based and digital texts. Social media have shaped the volunteering culture by strengthening the social relationships through online interactions.
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- 1.
Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones.
- 2.
Generally this generation of people was born in or after 1980 and is immersed in digital technologies.
- 3.
Minimum age (as one of the admission requirements): Applicants have to be 21 years old by the time they are officially enrolled as adult members of uniformed groups in Hong Kong.
- 4.
ACO is a youth organization or uniformed group sponsored by the Royal Air Force, UK.
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Ho, W.Sy. (2019). Adult Learners’ Digital Literacies on an Online Social Networking Site: Facebook. In: Tso, A.Wb. (eds) Digital Humanities and New Ways of Teaching. Digital Culture and Humanities, vol 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1277-9_12
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