Over the last few days there has been quite a commotion about a thread on Moodle.org Social forum that started with a discussion about an Art teacher who lost their job over a trip to a museum with artefacts depicting nude people, and moved on to other matters such as the treatment of homsexuality in modern Egyptian society.  I can't link to the thread as it has been hidden (yes!) but here is some subsequent discussion here and here 

I am delighted to report that Martin Dougiamas, founder of Moodle, has come in with a pragmatic and sensible solution to the recent problem by creating a new space within Moodle where more contentious and off-topic issues can be discussed.  The 'censored' thread will be restored, the bossy prefects have been gently deflated, and the purveyors of hot air (such as myself) can go and play in a space where they won't frighten the horses or the children.

Christopher Sessums asked this question  in relation to Weblogging and teacher learning: getting the most out of the online social networks.

I think that there is a danger in focusing on the technology/object - in this case the blog- and that we also need to look at the individuals activities and experiences.  Much LT research is 'provider-centric' looking at  VLE content and activity data perhaps because they are easy to observe rather than looking at the whole student experience (much more difficult to research). I agree with Christopher Sessums that the situation is important and find Lucy Suchman's and John Seely Brown's work very useful for this. 

Also Caroline Haythornthwaite did a rich study of distance learners see Haythornthwaite, C. (2001). Exploring multiplexity: Social network structures in a computer-supported distance learning class. Information Society, 17(3), 211-226. I really like her use of the idea of multiplexity where people (in her case students) will use the channel that best fits the particular communication.  To me, this highlights the danger of focusing on object/technology.

 I am sure that there is some very interesting work to be done on Blogs and community, perhaps looking at the networked individual and community perspective. I haven't seen any studies that look at a power analysis of Blogs and Community.  Has anyone else?