Hip-Hop and Democratic Digital Learning Spaces: A Cyber-Ethnography of an Online Community

• In Event: Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: Using Digital Technology to Support Lifelong Learning

Abstract

This paper employs a 5 year cyber ethnography to interrogate the impact of a weekly online Twitter chat that focuses on the intersections of Hip-hop and education on five participants in the chat that represent stakeholders in education and participants in hip-hop culture (A college professor, a teacher, a parent, a student, and a school counselor). The ethnography opens discussions about the participants key experiences during the chats, levels of participation, themes/topics discussed, and implications of the chat on their everyday lives. Analyzing these participants’ relationship to the cultural phenomenon that brought them to participate online (Hip-Hop) and experiences once online, provides novel insights into what can be done to create social media spaces that foster democratic learning for multiple stakeholders.

Authors

• Christopher Emdin, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Edmund S Adjapong, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Ian Levy, New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math and Science II