Into the Shadows, Out of the Streets: Teacher Activist Networks and the Public Square in the Post-Digital, Post-COVID Era

• In Event: Teacher Isolation in the Post-Digital Era: Challenges and Opportunities for Developing Teacher Networks Today

Abstract

Overview
In 2014, Sasha Costanza-Chock published Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets on transmedia social justice activism. This, and similar texts (Castells, 2015; Tufecki, 2017; Author 2017) captured the early 21st-century moment of rising transmedia activism and collaboration among social justice activists and organizers. Yet, anti-democratic shifts in the socio-political landscape, increased corporate marketization of platforms, and attacks on social justice activists post-COVID have led to a stark shift in the ways that teacher activists use and leverage social media and connected technologies today. This paper begins to examine this shift through a comparative analysis of social justice teacher activist networking activities from the pre-COVID era, and public engagement today on social media.

Perspectives
We draw from research on teacher activism (Picower, 2012) and transmedia organizing (Costanza-Chock, 2014) to frame and explain the significance of our findings, and overall take a critical perspective on social network theories (Author, 2023). Research on teacher activism has demonstrated the interconnections between activism and professional development (Quinn & Carl, 2015), commitment to the profession (Pour-Khorshid, 2018, and teacher identity (Catone, 2017). Scholarship on transmedia organizing has highlighted distinct ethical and socio-cultural themes common in such organizing, such as: horizontal leadership (Tufeki, 2017), a combination of online and face-to-face actions (Castells, 2015), ‘whole person’ engagement in activist work (Author, 2024), and strong commitment to social justice principles of equity and inclusion.

Methods & Data Sources
Data sources include 2018 interviews with 26 activist teachers from 14 activist networks across the U.S. and the most recent social media posts from six of the most prominent networks. I used a deductive approach to code the interviews, using codes that focused on teachers’ discussions of transmedia organizing and engagement. I used a temporal analysis to examine the social media posts, paying particular attention to shifts in the frequency of posts and audience engagement over time. For the comparative analysis, I compared themes that arose in the interviews with patterns later social media posts.

Results
In the 2018 interviews, there was an increasing shift into consideration of racial justice in the organizational work and infrastructure of teacher activist networks as a means to broaden network diversity, which was also reflected in frequent social media postings on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and network websites. After 2018, there was a significant reduction of posting on social media, especially X and network websites, a private turn in spaces such as Facebook, and a shift to public posts focusing particularly on healing and connection. These shifts reflected the isolating and traumatizing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a drive to find refuge from political attacks on social justice activists.

Scholarly Significance
This analysis traces a concurrent rise and retrenchment of transmedia organizing and social justice education activism from 2018-2025, highlighting the interconnectedness of the socio-cultural trends of society and underlying social infrastructures of the internet. The study is significant for its insights on the trends of critical issues for educators, teacher networking practices, and the roles that social media plays in shaping their work.

Author

• Kira J. Baker-Doyle, University of Illinois at Chicago