Imagining as a Collective: A Speculative Worldbuilding Approach to Moderation and Engagement in a Youth-Centered Digital Writing Community

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session One
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT052 (Wednesday)

Abstract

This study uses Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) to explore the way in which an intergenerational research team uses a worldbuilding framework to spark engagement in a youth-centered digital writing community on Discord. Preliminary findings indicate that a “worldbuilding approach” as applied to youth-centered moderation led to increased engagement across the server. Further analysis will explore how a practice of worldbuilding situated within existing lineages of speculative storytelling (afrofuturism, science fiction, fantasy) might allow youth writers to establish a more prefigurative approach to the worlds they inhabit beyond this digital community. Such findings will build upon existing scholarship on genre theory (Miller, 1984), speculative storytelling (Houlden & Veletsianos, 2022), and platform ecology (Ibert et al., 2021; Nichols, 2025).

Authors

• Louisa Dewey, University of Pennsylvania

• Sunny Ajitabh, Rutgers University

• Mary Wolters, University of Pennsylvania

• Sophia Yao, University of Pennsylvania