Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0001-8367-4358

Date of Award

5-12-2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology

First Advisor

Michelle Zoss, Ph.D. (Co-Chair)

Second Advisor

Gholnecsar Muhammad, Ph.D. (Co-Chair)

Third Advisor

Jennifer Esposito Norris, Ph.D.

Fourth Advisor

Charity Gordon, Ph.D.

Fifth Advisor

Detra Price-Dennis, Ph.D.

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand the ways in which Black girls between the ages of 13 and 18 leveraged social media to address sociopolitical issues relevant to their lives within a digital literacy collaborative. This study drew upon Black feminist-womanism theories to unpack how the girls’ digital content creating on social media shifted during their time in the program, how they addressed sociopolitical issues through their content, and the composing processes instrumental to their digital content creating via social media. As forerunners in digital content creating, it appears that Black youth, particularly Black girls are drawing upon social media as a public platform to engage in sociopolitical transformation and that their literary practices appear to bear resemblance to Black women writers of the past. In order to learn more about adolescent Black girls’ digital content creating, I hosted a digital literacy collaborative where each session served as a space to learn about the importance of digital content creating to the girls’ lives. Data sources from these sessions included pre-program and post-program interviews, participants’ digital content, screen recordings, and think alouds which were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings from this study revealed that throughout the digital literacy collaborative, the girls in this study gradually saw their social media platforms as an additional space for their sociopolitical engagement. Their sociopolitical engagement on social media consisted of bring awareness to the issues of importance to them and fostering conversations amongst their viewers. As the girls created content, their composing process was recursive. This study has the potential to assist literacy scholars, educators, and others to better understand the literacies Black girls draw upon during this specific social time to articulate their epistemologies, ideologies, and visions of the future.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/35534983

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