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In this paper we attempt to analyze the negotiation of social roles between students and teachers in the new interactive contexts mediated by technological medium. The object of the analysis is a school group in the social network Facebook. From the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Multimodal Theory, we attempted to account for the realization of interpersonal metafunction in this Facebook group; and, from the methodological apparatus of the ethnography of communication and conversation analysis, we describe the interactions to observe the roles played by participants in their discursive interactions and the resources they use. The study reveals that in a virtual space as Facebook, the traditional roles between teachers and students are reconfigured through resources that relieve the extent of imposition of participants over others and others that promote the care of the image of the partners; while it is enabling the development of trade relations and affection between subjects. The development of an educational virtual space in a social network facilitates communication between subjects and contributes to education in the classroom space, without jeopardizing the social images of teachers and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relations between Communication-Education organise a problematic configuration that allows us to think about present situations, transcending the first conceptualizations that were centered on the school/ media relationship. Social Sciences "classic" topics such us cultural transmission, authority or sociability can be refocused upon this perspective taking into account, on the one hand, discourse issues (its emerging conditions, circulation, reelaboration and censorship) and, on the other hand, the experiences (with institutions, among peers, intergenerational) as two concepts that allow to deepen viewpoints, which are often global in the educational phenomena. The aim of this work is to establish a connection between two research papers in process: the investigation on the ways in which the discourses on cultural authority go through the trajectory of the students training and the discourses -about sexuality, the body and affective relationships- which circulate in the frame of the student sociability. These topics are articulated from a common axis: the public space in which operations of cultural and intergenerational transmissions take place, with processes of reconfiguration of the subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet based communication technologies such as message boards could provide a useful tool for educational purposes by bringing together people with seemingly common interests, and providing a common ground for varied interactions within the virtual community such as exchange of information, resources and advise. As a cultural object (Geertz, 2000), however, these technologies comprise an array of different contexts and significances, often intertwined, that contribute to shape both possibilities and limitations of communication. In this paper, we focused on a message board about the uses of new technologies in education, aiming to analyse whether a common ground knowledge is possible within the virtual community as a kick off for more meaningful collective interactions, and if not, whether there are intrinsic characteristics to the forum that may hinder o diminish such construction, i.e. if all threads in the forum can eventually become a web for educational purposes or, on the contrary if they tend to become a gordian knot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]