Technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: Teaching with social media at a South African university Patient Rambe and Liezel Nel Patient Rambe is a senior researcher in the Department of Business Support Studies at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. His main research interests are the use of emerging web-based technologies to support the learning of marginalised students in resource-poor environments. Liezel Nel is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Informatics at the UFS. Her main research interests are focused on the use of various educational technologies to enhance the teaching and learning experiences of Computer Science students. Address for correspondence: Dr Patient Rambe, Senior Researcher, Department of Business Support Studies, Uni- versity of the Free State, Private Bag 20539, Bloemfontein 9300, South Africa. Email: pjoerambe@gmail.com Abstract The discourse of social media adoption in higher education has often been funnelled through utopian and dystopian perspectives, which are polarised but determinist theorisations of human engagement with educational technologies. Consequently, these determinist approaches have obscured a broadened grasp of the situated, socially con- structed nature of human interaction with educational technologies and failed to explain ambivalent positions of technology adoption. To contest the innate determinism embodied in the aforementioned technological views, this paper draws on technologi- cal ambivalence to unravel the complex, multiple possibilities in pragmatic use of technology—including the double-bound relationship between human agency and edu- cational technology. A phenomenological approach that draws on self-narratives of the use of social media by Computer Science and Informatics educators at a South African university is employed to unravel how their perceptions of social media shaped and informed their pragmatic instructional uses of these technologies. Findings suggest that the sharp contrasting experiences of collaborative engagement, enactment of decentralised power and democratic expression in social media coexist recursively with the disempowering, dependence-ridden and distractive effects of these technologies.This technological divergence is further compounded by ambivalent views that neither cel- ebrate the unrealistic hopes of social media nor grossly protest against the debilitating effects of these technologies. This view foregrounds the social embeddedness of technol- ogy and its potentially multiple, contradictory effects. The implications of these findings include the need for educators to consider social conditions of technology use, the alignment of such conditions with innovative social media-enhanced pedagogical models and the use of proven models to demonstrate the educational potential of social media technologies. Introduction Although various contrasting definitions of social media exist in literature (Bosch, 2009; Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Selwyn, 2007; Shirky, 2003), most authors use the term to refer to web-based multimedia production and distribution tools incorporating text (blogs, wikis, Twitter), audio (podcasting, Skype), photo (Flickr) and video (vodcasting, YouTube) capabilities (McLoughlin & Lee, 2010). From an academic point of view, social media is cherished for its capacity to offer British Journal of Educational Technology (2014) doi:10.1111/bjet.12159 © 2014 British Educational Research Association