Transformative Digital Spaces: Disrupting Traditional Notions of Learning and Reimagining Educational Possibilities Through Social Media

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In this session, the authors ask how educational researchers can move within and beyond the classroom to boldly imagine criticality and relevance in digital spaces, and specifically on social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and Facebook). The four papers highlight educational case studies in social media that engage a praxis of resistance, reflection, collaboration, and disruption. The papers collectively invite the education research community to (a) recognize how the limitations of traditional educational systems and curriculum have worked to oppress marginalized communities and (b) imagine how social media can support theories of action, engage in transformative modes of inquiry, and implement ideas for professional practice that simultaneously disrupt traditional modes of learning and engage in epistemological and ontological transformations.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Glynda A. Hull, University of California, Berkeley

Papers

• Centering Student Experiences With TikTok in a Critical Media Literacy Course - Megan Marie Everett, University of California - Berkeley

• Participatory Learning and Endangered Language Reclamation on Instagram - Pa Nou Vue, University of California - Berkeley

• Navigating Racial Discourses: Youth’s Use of Emotes on Twitch - Sandra Jacobo, University of California - Berkeley

• Transfronterizxs Amidst COVID-19: Social Media Ethnography as an Innovative Method to Study Border-Crossing Literacy Practices - Isaac Alejandro Felix, University of California - Berkeley

Discussant

• Amy Stornaiuolo, University of Pennsylvania