Balancing Possibilities for Identity and Meaning With the Algorithmic Underbelly: Research Into Youth Digital Writing

• In Event: Tensions in Practicing and Researching Critical Digital Literacies for/in Platformized Environments

Abstract

Purpose/Framing
This literature review examines research on adolescent multimodal composing published in the last decade (2013-2023) to consider insights into youth identity as mediated by the digital era. Engagement with this literature has the potential to provide nuance to conversations about youth participation and writing online, particularly on social media, to consider both the affordances and constraints digital platforms provide for youth identity development and community formation.

Methods/Findings
The findings are drawn from 31 peer-reviewed articles found in the ERIC and Education Source databases. While the literature has focused on identity formation and community influence feedback loop that happens in digital composing, as well as opportunities for collaboration, greater examination of how youth identities are shaped by the exploitative elements of platforms is needed. This context has been called “contemporary technocapitalism (Suarez-Villa, 2009), ‘a new form of capitalism that is heavily grounded on corporate power and its exploitation of technological creativity’ (p. 3)” (de Roock, 2021, p. 184). Racial technocapitalism is the acknowledgement that “racialization and capitalism are historically and analytically inseparable.” (de Roock, 2021, p. 184). ​​As de Roock (2021) explains, “digital writing is increasingly mediated through commercial digital apps and other interactive platforms. Algorithms thus play the role of coauthors with profit motives” (p. 187). Rather than viewing platforms merely as digital tools to be taken up and used by youth in their composing process, a critical stance requires interrogation of the motivations of the designers of the platforms, as well as the designs of the algorithms that run beneath. Researchers and teachers alike need to ask themselves, for what purpose and in whose interest is this multimodal composition being created? How might students’ identities be unintentionally (on the part of the researcher or teacher) commodified by the platform? Additionally, the literature on youth identities reveals the ways in which youth are making strategic design decisions for the curation of themselves in online spaces (Kovalik & Curwood, 2019; Rubio-Hurtado et al., 2022; Valdivia, 2021).

Significance
Research must consider how platforms shape the kind of identity curation available to youths, influencing how they see themselves and others, as well as express themselves through writing. This commodification of identity on platforms can have negative repercussions, especially as we learn more about how the algorithms that drive platforms tend to reproduce existing racist, sexist, etc. structuring of the world. While the potential to engage in increased collaboration in one’s digital writing can be a positive, platforms also have a great deal of influence over who is in conversation with whom, and can ultimately amplify existing issues of race and identity through the creation of echo chambers. Future research into the phenomenon of youth identities in digital writing and multimodal composing must contend with these concerns. The celebration of the generative possibilities of digital writing for identity construction/exploration, community connections, collaboration, authentic audiences and feedback, and general liberatory educational aims must be tempered by a wariness of the predatory potential of the platforms that facilitate such writing.

Author

• Mary Elizabeth Talian, University of Pennsylvania