Tagging- Democratic ?

The concept of social tagging has within itself an implicit ideal of democratisation of learning and sharing knowledge. This assumption is possible because technological access allows empowering a learner. Tagging operates to allow key words which act as representations of concepts and thus as signifiers of an object represented by meaning and its signification.However, the reality remains that knowledge by virtue of its anthropological basis and by its construct has some hierarchical structure and organisation which tagging may not be able to overcome entirely. As Freire demonstrates, however much the argument for democratisation of learning through dialogical and intersubjective processes, the knowledge structuration is difficult to obliterate. The relation between the human mind and its object of learning operates through schematic processes. The instructor is empowered and in turn seeks to empower the learners.
Social Tagging certainly allows the possibility of empowering learners to seek words which represent some concepts of some representation.The modernist and post-modernist perspectives show that the human individual is an agent is highly individuated and hence operates ever more subjectivity.
The claims of tagging as largely democratic beg to be empirically verified through sociological, pychological and linguistic studies. Social Tagging also involves the critical element of gender, race, cultures and social and economic contexts of human individuals which may be important factors in the consideration of tagging and its potential for an ideal shared democratic platform for meaning. To top it all, there is the question of the ownership of technology and the 'participation gap' which has been engendered on account of the digital world and economies of information.If these fundamental factors are taken into consideration normatively, there is the potential of social tagging to become one of the modes in which objects could be represented meaningfully through cultural and pluralist semiotics and become more meaningful way of representing reality. Afterall learning is an endeavour to seek one's place within the Universe and the world we live in and a democratic ideal of learning where everyone gets an equal chance to make meaning and becoming human.