The Reconstitution of the Public Domain: Using Digital Narratives to Promote Social Justice Scholarship

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Social Justice and Narrative Research

Abstract

Through the medium of citizen documentary, we asked six practicing teachers to analyze, theorize, and problematize a key social justice issue through the medium of citizen documentary. This study focuses on six practicing teachers engaged in critical, narrative methods of research and inquiry. Citizen documentary is a relatively new phenomenon, largely driven by the rise of social media and video sharing platforms. For this group of practicing teachers, citizen documentary offers a means to examine, address, and confront social inequities through digital narratives. Unlike traditional forms of knowledge mobilization that rely solely on text-based forms of transmission, video-based citizen documentary methods have the potential to convey in powerful, compelling, and even visceral ways the narratives of oppression, domination, and discrimination.

Authors

• Karyn A. Cooper, University of Toronto

• Rebecca Hughes, University of Toronto