"Local" Youth Writers in a "Global" Networked Literacies Ecology

• In Event: Restorying Young Adult Literature to Reconstruct Educational Possibility in Classrooms and Beyond

Abstract

The interwovenness of digital technologies in everyday practices of youth has meant youths’ lives are more connected than before (boyd, 2014; Wargo, 2015). Youth engage with and work across different interconnected platforms and spaces, often composing and creating texts and media based on conversations they encounter in both online and offline communities; they embody multiple identities by circulating content created by others, and share (their) content across networks, platforms, and physical spaces. Yet, youth literacy practices on and through digitally mediated tools and networks are often framed within a discourse of affordances, particularly for youth who experience multiple marginalization by virtue of their identities and social locations. Through the vignettes of one youth participant’s writings, this paper raises questions around the ways youth might be engaging in networked media spaces, the practices that may be invisible, and what this invisibility afford and constrain. This paper offers these open and ongoing questions as an invitation to understand how knowledge is constructed around youth literacy practices in networked media spaces and the ways in which normative ways of knowing might constrain the alternative pathways and circulations that youth might already be a part of.

Author

• Rabani Garg, University of Pennsylvania