Online Literacy Engagement
When discussing experience with digital composition, it feels like a world where everyone is making content. If you aren't making content, you are the odd one out. I don't use social media anymore; it doesn't make me smile; does it really make anybody fill up with glee?
The content that I "experience" the most outside of the Great British Bake Off, House MD (for the 12th time), and other media on a screen. Would be Instagram to get information on news and updates on protests. I take part in social activism on social media, learning about what is happening, events near me, and the occasional Yungblud or Sabrina Carpentar edit. (I'm not perfect) Though I only have 30 minutes of social networks site until it locks me out. If I spend my time on reels, instead of sharing posts from the ACLU, Voces de la Frontera, and many more amazing activist groups with my friends. I have a sense of guilt because I used my time to watch edits of rich people or clips from shows I have already seen too many times. I am tired of losing my time to blue light and not touching more grass.
When I state that I don't use social media for my mental health, everyone is shocked that I have the willpower to not go on it. Though this was not always the case, my experience creating content in the digital world is vast. I used to post a lot on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, sharing photos of experiences and updates about my life. I always have to document my life. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well, I used to think, "If I don't post a photo of it, did it really happen?" I don't think like that anymore and like to keep my life to myself, mainly. One of the experiences of creating content that I don't often mention is that I used to make edits and videos on TikTok about Stranger Things season four (who could resist Eddie Munson?).
Capturing my online activity is difficult now that I no longer use social media. However, I used to doomscroll on TikTok for hours. I loved BookTok and have a whole list of books I found there on my To Be Read list. I found that there are an immense number of books from people who love the same things I do, and I can find books that capture my interest more there than the books my friends recommend to me, since we have different genre interests. I jump around a lot with genres based on my moods, and there are books I have found that have helped me learn and normalize my disabilities. BookTok helped me grow my library with books that improved my mental health, and I found a lot of feminist activism that deepened my understanding of political and cultural activism. "The social, cultural, and political components of digital literacies emphasize the significance of content and the meaning that is conveyed and generated... Book content is created with purposeful decisions" (Boffene and Jerasa, p. 222). BookTok is more than just finding Young Adult books or the most popular book of the year. Numerous books help shape people's understanding of what is happening in society today. Books have power, and having a resource that recommends a myriad of books in different genres has helped me with my activism and changed my life.
When students have the chance to choose their own projects and learn what they want, it creates more engagement in classrooms. As for myself, getting the right to choose what I write about helped me engage more in the classroom. I was able to write a textual analysis on the movie Pretty Baby and the blatant pedophilia in the movie and how it is still relevant thirty years later, "a feel for how Hollywood tends to portray women of color... full range of human experience and depth rather than the stereotypes, objectification, and fetishization of women of color. That they often see on their screens" (Dejaynes and Curmi-Hall, p. 4). We all see stereotypes daily, and I have always wanted to write about the hypersexualization of women in media, especially women of color and queer women. Not only is there an immense amount of sexualization of women in media. The deaths of women in marginalized communities are brutal and happen often in media. Audiences see these deaths happen in their favorite media that inaccurately reflect the real lives of these women. The depths you can find on the internet on what happens to marginalized women is extensive. There is a form online that shows the depictions of the brutal deaths that happen to lesbian characters in films. It has since stopped posting and has not included every media, though it reached over 200 deaths. Looking at this list, it shows how queer women's lives do not matter, and they are killed in a more brutal way than heterosexual characters. This is relevant to our society because queer women are killed in brutal ways, and their lives are lost in media to cis-hetero women. It is important to recognize that hypersexualization happens in media, but other stereotypes, and harmful tropes happen on screen as well. I was able to write about them in one of the feminist writing classes that helped me grow my activism and figure out what I am passionate about fighting for.
With digital media, students can choose what they want to read and research. They can grow their voice in the classroom, which is important for their development. Instead of giving students books we picked out and a topic we chose, this decreases their engagement and can suck the joy out of the classroom. Letting students choose and use digital media like TikTok can increase engagement by giving them something they enjoy, teaching them how to use social media safely, and helping them use it within the context of school. However, there are pitfalls to this that we must recognize: not everyone may have access to Wi-Fi or devices that allow them to run apps on their phone. In addition, parents may not want their students to have a social media presence or be able to participate in these classroom activities. For students in an Urban ELA classroom, they may be exhausted from looking at screens all day. Everything is on Chromebook, even though studies show that students learn better by taking notes by hand. When it comes to reading, they may not want to look at an eBook or have the attention to listen to an audiobook. It is tiring to look at a screen all day and not want to scream.
You'll soon learn I am extremely pessimistic.
As someone who has done a fair amount of film and gender studies myself, I agree that there are many engaging things to read and write about in these fields. I did a project once where I discussed the characteristics of the femme fatale trope among two different geographical and historical contexts, and certainly gleaned a lot as far of what the media tends to consider as "evil" traits for women. To your point, one of the films I studied was "Basic Instinct," which garnered a lot of flack for the way that it handled the concept of Catherine Tramell's (the femme fatale) bisexuality, and how it at times seems like it demonizes her more for that than for being a serial killer (spoiler alert for a 34-year-old movie, sorry). Further, after Nick Curran (the objectively morally awful main character) continuously treats Tramell's girlfriend with prejudice, the film kills her off, with the implication that part of her instability and anger is because she is LGBTQ+. For both of these things, the film got a lot of criticism, even at the time, but it was interesting to analyze, decades later, the ways in which the film modified the femme fatale trope to fit their narrative. Allowing students to explore their interests in a similar way, I think, is key to getting more students into research and finding what it is that they're passionate about, and what they might fight for in the future.
ReplyDeleteI am really glad you speak a lot about mental health in your post this week. I think it is really important to keep this in our conversations this semester as we navigate facilitating student engagement in digital spaces. I see the effects social media has on our young people each and every day. Most recently, a student of mine lost a close family member in one of the ways the news loves to cover (keeping details private out of respect for my student). The public comments underneath the links to the articles on social media were absolutely awful and caused this student to spiral into a really dark place of anger and sadness. They were once again infuriated by public comments under posts about the walkout students organized at my school to protest ICE and the current administration. The feeling of being personally attacked by individuals hiding behind their screens, leaving hateful comments on the lives of others is difficult for an adult, I cannot imagine this feeling as a teen. We worked through it together and found strategies that worked to put their comments into perspective (open source intelligence tools are powerful).
ReplyDeleteI am not immune to the deep cuts my mental health takes due to my online presence. I find myself consuming as much content as I can relating to the atrocities taking place in Minneapolis because I feel it is important to know the truth of the situation. I fear the censorship of news and social media because it threatens our ability to be prepared and organized. But it hurts to watch. I cannot look away. It isn't the content that is harming me, it is WHAT is happening and how entities are trying their best to avert our attention and hide the truth.
Wow! I think it is so refreshing to see someone who does not engage with social media! I have always wanted to be that person, but I definitely struggle with a social media addiction (specifically TikTok). It takes a lot to not engage in that, especially how things are now. many people not only enjoy viewing content, but they rely on it. Not having Snapchat is a huge deal to many people! I also agree that the internet can be beneficial for students, but can also be something that decreases their engagement and success. There definitely is hope though! I did field work at one of the high schools in Milwaukee and many of the students barely used the chromebooks they had offered (if at all). The ELA class would only use the Chromebooks when necessary and used paper other times. I think in an urban setting, it can be easier to use paper and pen rather than Chromebooks since many times Chromebooks are not individualized to each student. This was a great post!
ReplyDeleteI love how you speak to the ways in which things like social activism can thrive in these spaces sometimes. It kind of reminds me of just how these thoughts and ideologies are able to spread in ways they weren’t able to before. I also admire your ability to limit your social media screen time, which is something I think most people could also benefit from. You also talk about how you were able to learn about and normalize your disabilities through these spaces as well which I see as a positive because I know many people who didn’t have the language to represent themselves or the ability to reach other people who related to them. You bring up great points on how this can be applied to classrooms by being able to interpret or analyze how things outside of the classroom (such as films) can be approached the same way we would academic materials.
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