Rethinking Digital Citizenship: Learning About Media, Literacy, and Race in Turbulent Times
by Antero Godina Garcia, Sarah McGrew, Nicole Mirra, Brendesha Tynes, and Joseph Kahne
The practice of politics is changing in the digital age. Indeed, whether one considers mainstream electoral politics or major social movements, the central role of social media and of the digital revolution more generally is clear. Youth are at the forefront of these changes (Krueger, 2002) and are showcasing their sense of agency, strategic creativity, and commitment as exemplified by their central roles in large-scale movements such as the #blacklivesmatter, #marchforourlives, and the DREAMer movement. Overall, youth participate in politics online at higher rates than adults (Smith, 2013). These new political practices have been described in various ways, including “connective action” (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012), “e-expressive” participation (Gibson & Cantijoch, 2013), “connected civics” (Ito et al., 2015), and “online participatory politics” (Cohen et al., 2012). Such online political activities are interactive, often peer-based, and generally not deferential to institutional or elite guidance. This shift has transformed the ways that information is accessed, the ways that discourse and reasoning occur, and ultimately, the tools of political participation. To be sure, this transformation creates opportunities; in other ways, it creates challenges.
In this chapter, the authors focus on these opportunities and challenges and on ways that educators might better prepare youth for civic reasoning and discourse in the digital age.1 More specifically, they analyze differing efforts to support reasoning and discourse by helping youth interact safely and civilly in online spaces, assess the reliability of information, leverage the power of connected learning opportunities, and engage in political action online. The authors find that there is a need to rethink what it means to educate for digital citizenship. Current media literacy efforts have value, but they often focus on individual skills, behaviors, and orientations and fail to pre- pare students to understand, recognize, and respond to structural factors, particularly racism, as they relate to discourse and reasoning in the digital age.