Textures of Social Media Exchange: Youth Identity and Digital Aesthetics in a Global Learning Environment

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

In light of the tremendous popularity of social media and its new configurations of social power and digital aesthetic, how might we imagine the possibilities of social media as a learning space in which youth not just ‘come to know’, but make, relate and do? This session explores educational implications of incorporating social media in various contexts, focusing on adolescents’ engagements within a multi-site international social network and the opportunities afforded to explore identity production through language, aesthetics, and mulitliteracies. Panelists will consider how the program sites—located within school, nonschool and afterschool contexts—offered opportunities for youths’ digital, transliterate composing and present new environments for students to negotiate identities as learners, artists, and members of a globally-connected world.

Sub Unit

• Division C - Learning and Instruction / Section 5: Learning Environments

Chair

• Anna Smith, New York University

Papers

• “We Put Our Swag All Over It”: Negotiating Local and Global Identity Online and Offline - Tracie R. Wallace, University of California - Berkeley

• “No, I’m Not Smart; I’m Just Trolling”: 21st-Century Identities Across Discussion Formats - Anna Smith, New York University; Dee Anne Anderson, New York University

• Designing Identity: An Exploration of Youth Identity in Multimodal Design - Matthew Hall, The College of New Jersey; Laura A. Davis, New York University

• Aesthetics of the Everyday: A Walk Along the Shoreline of Youth Identity - John Michael Scott, University of California - Berkeley

Discussant

• Glynda A. Hull, University of California - Berkeley