ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how productive participation in networks requires an understanding of the social and digital literacies and skills essential for effective engagement with such networks, and yet social stratification and exclusion in online environments and networks is reinforced. Inequity permeates online networks in a similar way that it permeates other organizational structures. To benefit from networks, however, scholars not only need to understand the participatory nature of the web, they also need to develop the social and digital literacies and skills essential for effective engagement with such networks. Social stratification and exclusion in online environments and networks can preclude particular voices from being heard in the same ways that others might be. While networks have been shown to allow scholars to contribute to public knowledge creation and dissemination in ways that academic institutions do not necessarily manage, it is also important to recognize that networks circulate their own set of dominant voices.
