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Paper Short Abstract

The impact of social media on children has proven a challenge for management in schools and at home in the family. This paper shows how rural local communities in the southwest of Ireland strategized to mitigate the negative impacts caused by social media use amongst their children.

Paper Abstract

The impact of social media on children has proved a challenge for management in schools and at home in the family. This paper shows how local communities strategized to mitigate the negative impacts caused by social media use amongst their children. The strategy centers around a small primary school and its success widely reported in the national media yet the mainstream news did not tell the full story. The affordances provided by social media were locally used to develop a community anew in order to mitigate the ill-effects on the upcoming generation thereby mitigating – without demonizing – the effects of sociotechnical processes. This case is useful in showcasing how ethnographic work can illuminate the impact of the algorithm in an indirect fashion, casting light on the negative image generated by obfuscated online actions, themselves influenced by unknown algorithms directing human attention and influencing social relations.