In the Filter Bubble (Pariser 2011), a criticism of the personalisation of content on the web, Eli Pariser suggests that “narrow self-interests” persist, presupposing that all ties, and mediations (e.g. filtering, prioritisation) of social media, will exclusively prioritise strong connections with shared worldviews, values, and beliefs. Similarly Cass Sunstein (2007) compares Nicholas Negroponte’s vision of “The Daily Me” (Negroponte 1995) - a fully personalised daily newspaper built around the individual’s own views and news - with Putnam’s (2000) concept of “balkanisation”, the breaking apart of society into polarised fragments.
Such fracturing of the mainstream could be interpreted as a move towards more diverse archipelagos of “affinity spaces” (Gee 2004). Gee’s definition, and subsequent work on affinity spaces (e.g. McLoughlin and Lee 2007) explicitly addresses online spaces, suggesting that even the most filtered and personalised of social networking sites may play host to an affinity space, a place for informal learning to take place amongst participants. That learning may take place over a long period of time but could also be fleeting in nature building on convenience and common ground, as in Engstrom’s concept of Knotworking (Engeström, Engeström and Vähäaho 1999). There is, however, no guarantee of the quality, reliability or balance of information and views exchanged.
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