Tensions in Practicing and Researching Critical Digital Literacies for/in Platformized Environments

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium addresses the need for more critical perspectives (Freire, 1972) in digital literacies research and practice that account for the processes and experiences of platformization, datafication, and mass individualization (Nichols et al., 2021). The three papers in this symposium consider a diverse set of contexts: a practitioner inquiry-guided study with Ontario high school English teachers, an advertising literacy unit with 6th graders in Massachusetts, and a literature review of youth multimodal composing. Together, presenters will highlight tensions related to the teaching, learning, and enactment of critical digital literacies in K-12 classrooms and out-of-school spaces. In doing so, they build upon longstanding and emerging conversations in literacies regarding developing more critical, interrogative stances for a changing digital world.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Media, Culture, and Learning

Chair

• Tess Bernhard, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Examining Critical Digital Literacies With Canadian Secondary Teachers - Melissa Arasin, University of Toronto

• Moral Advertising Literacy for Digital Platform Environments: Findings From a Classroom-Based Program - Michelle Ciccone, University of Massachusetts - Amherst; Cecilia Yuxi Zhou, University of Massachusetts - Amherst; Thomas Underwood, University at Albany - SUNY; Erica Scharrer, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Balancing Possibilities for Identity and Meaning With the Algorithmic Underbelly: Research Into Youth Digital Writing - Mary Elizabeth Talian, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• T. Philip Nichols, Baylor University