Week 6 Discussion

The authors of Writing in the Wild posit that writing in online affinity spaces “motivate young people to write through self-directed and interest-based opportunities to share their work with an authentic audience” (p. 678). While I agree that there are many opportunities for informal learning in these affinity spaces, I worry that we are not seeing the darker side of young adults online. I’m not very familiar with affinity spaces, which may be a ‘safe place’ online for an engaged audience, helpful critique and community, but I have seen the backlash of online journaling where feedback is not very constructive, but rather hurtful. And instead of authentic audiences, commenters were anonymous. By no means do I disagree with the authors point of promoting young people to have ‘self-directed, multimodal and authentic writing opportunities in out-of-school settings’, but rather I would like to have seen them shed light on challenges and how to mitigate them.