Sitting Down With Professor Dril: An Exploration of Shitposting as Public Pedagogy

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Titillating and Trifling Matter(s) in Curriculum Studies

Abstract

With the growing ubiquity of social media in everyday life, critical media scholars have increasingly called for the examination of online practices that perforate the boundaries of in and out of school contexts (Kessler, 2019). In response, I use this paper to examine shitposting, a discursive practice within social media contexts that I position as a tool for public pedagogy (see Giroux, 2004). I achieve this by, first, redefining shitposting through extant research on the topic and, second, placing shitposting within Burnett & Merchant’s (2011) model for critical analysis within social media via Serres’ (2007) definition of noise. In doing so, I argue that shitposting holds the potential to contribute to the democratic aims of critical digital media literacy.

Author

• Peter Jacob Woods, Massachusetts Institute of Technology