Abstract
This chapter explores why and how students need guidance in using social media and how teacher education and professional development might support teachers in understanding how new and veteran teachers might begin to incorporate social media into their civics teaching. Despite often being perceived as being proficient at using social media, in a study of teachers who used the social media platform Twitter as part of their civics teaching, teachers found that young people needed guidance in how to use social media, both generally and for civic purposes. This chapter also includes a discussion of the aspects of social media that can be manipulative or harmful, often without the awareness of users. This chapter concludes with ways in which students can be supported in learning and using social media for civic purposes.
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Keywords
This chapter offers recommendations for teacher preparation to teach civic education with social media. Based on a third finding from the study, this chapter discusses how teacher education and professional development might support teachers in understanding how new and veteran teachers might begin to incorporate social media into their civics teaching. This chapter also explores why and how students need guidance in using social media. Despite often being perceived as being proficient at using social media, the teachers in this study found that young people needed guidance in how to use it, both generally and for civic purposes. This chapter also includes a discussion of the aspects of social media that can be manipulative or harmful. Students are often unaware of the more dubious parts of social media, such as the ways it can manipulate users into only seeing posts they might agree with (echo chambers) or in which social media become a vehicle for spreading disinformation. This chapter concludes with ways in which students can be supported in learning and using social media for civic purposes. I argue that teachers who want to use social media in the classroom should teach students about the more problematic aspects of social media, such as misinformation and echo chambers.
Scaffolders: The Right Tool at the Right Time
Each of the teachers in this study were scaffolded into their use of Twitter, though this happened differently across the five cases. In four out of five cases, teachers were prompted to use Twitter in their classrooms because they had been introduced to Twitter by an influential peer, though there is variation in this commonness that is representative of the complexity of coming to use Twitter for civic education. The influential peer appeared differently in each case: a technology trainer; a colleague; connections during graduate school; and in the case of Will, his own interest. Most of the teachers approached Twitter in the context of how it could be used in the classroom (rather than as a personal social media tool), though again, here, their intentions and experiences varied.
A common experience for the teachers was that their introduction to Twitter occurred after the teachers had objectives for their students in mind. This enabled the teachers to connect the potential uses of Twitter for education generally with some of the specific objectives they had for their students. As a result, they constructed their own knowledge about how Twitter could be useful for civic education, often with the help of slightly more capable peers. In Donna’s case, it was the trainer at a professional development program; following this training, Donna wanted to use Twitter after “just seeing how effective it can be.” The trainer had connected Twitter to three of Donna’s objectives for students: it provided access to people who hold a range of opinions; it connected users to what is going on in the country; and it provided users with access to political decision-makers in real-time. Donna used Twitter with her students because it helps her to achieve these objectives; she connected Twitter to the way she exercised her civic responsibilities, and so she ascribed to it considerable importance and value for civic education.
Jed was also introduced to Twitter through a personal connection, although in his case it was a colleague in another department at the school in which they were both teaching. Jed had been interested in using social media generally during his teacher education program in college, but he did not have specific uses in mind for it. Upon starting his teaching career, Jed began to value pedagogies which would develop student-teacher relationships because he saw the benefits of these relationships to his students and to their learning in class. Around the same time, Jed met a teacher in the English department at his school, who was already a frequent Twitter user. This colleague said that he used Twitter with his class particularly for the purpose of building community with his students. This rationale resonated with Jed, who started to try Twitter with his own students. Jed continues to find value in using Twitter to build community among his students, their parents, and the broader community, whether through tweeting about their sports accomplishments, their in-class work, or in connecting his school’s gay-straight alliance with other GSAs in Iowa.
Leo also came to use Twitter through a personal connection, although his initial objectives, that Twitter helped him to meet, were not for his students but for himself. Talking to his friend who was already using Twitter for education caused Leo to want to explore using Twitter to develop a professional learning network. As soon as Leo started using Twitter, he got connected to other social studies teachers, and with them he developed #SSChat, an online community which continues to exist. Within this community, Leo started crowdsourcing lessons, using Google Docs to share resources and collaborate on lesson plans. Through this process of developing lessons with other teachers, Leo realized that he wanted to have his students connect to others as he had been able to do, and so he began connecting his students with the students of some of his collaborators. One of the fruits of these collaborations was that Leo began to use Twitter with his students for civic education. Even though Leo’s initial objectives were for himself and not for his students, his initial prompt to use Twitter was a personal connection that related to his objectives.
Charlie’s introduction to Twitter came at the intersection of two events: his classes for his master’s program and his school’s transition to providing every student with their own laptop computer. Charlie explained that he did not decide to use Twitter because his school was improving the computer access for its students, but that change, combined with the discussions he was having in his educational master’s program, prompted him to want to try using Twitter with his students. At the time, one of Charlie’s objectives for his students was to spark discussion among them, and the conversations he was having in his master’s program combined with his students’ increased access to the internet made him think that Twitter might provide a way in which he could start discussions in class. Although this connection is more about Charlie making sense of conversations with peers in his master’s program rather than a specific invitation to Twitter from a friend, it is still an example of how Twitter appeared to be the right tool introduced at the right time for Charlie.
Will’s use of Twitter with his students resulted from his choice to use it personally; he thought the features that were unique to Twitter could be useful or interesting in his teaching of civics. Thus, Will was self-scaffolded into his use of Twitter; although his introduction to the platform did not come via an influential peer, he was still prompted to use Twitter and scaffolded his use of the platform for his classroom himself. Will did not discuss how long he was using Twitter personally before using it with his students, but it is clear that over time Will found that Twitter had potential for use in the teaching of civics.
Teachers as Scaffolders for Students’ Social Media Use
As much as the teachers in this study needed prompting and guidance from others to use Twitter in their classrooms, so too do students need guidance in using social media, and particularly in using it for civic participation. There is a disconnect between the ways in which many high-school students in the United States are being taught civics and methods of civic participation and the ways in which youth are actually participating in civic life. While some students benefit from the traditional ways of teaching civics, there are other students whose civic imaginations remain uninspired by these ways. If the hope of civic education is to produce well-informed and active citizens, adjustments must be made in civic education. One of these adjustments could be to purposefully incorporate the use of social media into civics learning, particularly as there is evidence that youth are already using this media for civic engagement purposes.
Further, there is a misconception that because students are nearly all on social media, they know how to use it well or for the purposes of civic engagement. Though the perception that the young understand how to use social media because they were born into a world where it already existed, prior research and the teachers in this study have found that to be untrue (Brown & Czerniewicz, 2010). Perhaps the clearest example from this study was Donna’s student who had been an active user but without her guidance still would have fallen for a phishing scam. Donna had seen cases in which students not only lacked technological proficiency, but were exploited because of their lack of awareness of the way social media worked. Students do not only need to know the basics of how to use social media; they need to know that social media is not neutral.
Social Media Is Not Neutral
Given the number of studies on the use of social media for learning, it is not unsurprising that there are some which argue that the platform either does not support or, in fact, hinders learning. What a user sees when they open Twitter is chosen and presented based on algorithms (Huszár et al., 2022). In spite of much recent debate in the last few years that voices on the political right have been censored and by design are not as often seen on the platform, recent research showed the opposite to be true. In six out of seven countries studied, including the United States, the tweets of elected officials from parties on the political right were amplified by the algorithm more often than those officials on the political left (Huszár et al., 2022). Further, looking at U.S. news sources, those sources which were right-leaning were amplified more than those which were left-leaning (Huszár et al., 2022). Two things about this are notable: first, that the Twitter algorithm does not equitably promote tweets holding different perspectives and, second, that the public perception of the way in which the algorithm works is used in incorrect or manipulative ways.
Such a finding is also important because Twitter, as a social media space, functions differently than earlier platforms others had. Social media had initially been a largely reciprocal space: for instance, on Facebook, for two people to be connected, they both needed to agree to that connection through a friend request (Ellison & boyd, 2013). On Twitter, one is neither required nor obliged to follow accounts or users which follow you. While this may appear to offer greater freedom to users—which it in fact may—navigating these connections has become more complex (Ellison & boyd, 2013). Additionally, while often billed as a very participatory space, the number of accounts which produce new content is small compared to those who consume it (Manca & Ranieri, 2013, 2016). Although aimed at social media more broadly, a further criticism has been that much of the content which is shared is self-serving in nature, rather than informational or a sharing of viewpoints or topics which are meant to prompt broader discussion (Kirshner, 2015). As seen above, social media mirrors society’s power structures (Selwyn, 2014), often in ways which perpetuate injustice or marginalization (Literat, 2021). Specifically, it must be noted that the nature of Twitter does not amplify the tweets of young people and those in power in the same ways, which limits the voice of young people and is a barrier to full civic engagement using Twitter.
Potential for Harm and Privacy Concerns
Students enter into education as whole human beings, with lived experience and ways they have come to understand the world. Education is at its best when they are seen that way, when those experiences are acknowledged, and when students are treated with inherent dignity and worth (Chapman et al., 2021). Social media has been shown to support students’ identity development, expression, and sense of belonging and connection (boyd, 2014; Ito et al., 2009; Literat & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019; Wargo, 2017). This study has shown that civics teachers thought that this type of whole child education also supported students’ civic education. However, the converse is also true. Some of those experiences that students bring into learning spaces are difficult, challenging, or traumatic, and these, too, have implications for students’ civic learning and expression (Payne & Journell, 2019). Social media can also have negative impacts on students’ self-concept (Michikyan & Subrahmanyam, 2012; Way & Malvini Redden, 2017). Relatedly, although research has shown the value of incorporating multiple perspectives into civic education (Toledo & Enright, 2021), students may have learned that some perspectives are either wrong or inappropriate to discuss (Payne & Journell, 2019). Consequently, asking students to participate on social media may expose them to multiple perspectives, but it might also expose them to content or images which are personally hurtful or which conflict with what they may have learned outside of school.
Finally, multiple teachers in this study thought about how using Twitter for education inserted them into students’ lives in ways that were different from typical classroom interactions. Prior research has also raised the issue of privacy concerns when teachers incorporate the use of social media into education (Hodkinson, 2017; Marwick & boyd, 2014). While not a negative feature of Twitter per se, this comingling of professional and personal spaces and identities must be considered. Leo wanted to bring in parents’ voices into the classroom and wanted to increase the connection between home and school in a very transparent way. Jed wanted students to feel supported and encouraged by the community, including him. Both of them wanted increased engagement with their students because they thought it better supported the students. Donna and Charlie wanted to find a balance between using Twitter and respecting students’ privacy. They recognized that students felt that social media was a space apart from school, and neither Donna nor Charlie wanted to take that away from students. Rather, they both wanted students to engage more thoughtfully and intentionally on social media.
It seems that there is value in a blended approach: student worth could be supported through teachers’ use of Twitter, which meant that both needed to be connected to their students through the platform. At the same time, students need to learn about social media and how it can be leveraged for change, but also how it can be manipulative. These issues could be discussed in the abstract, but it seems safer and more thorough if teachers engage with students on Twitter—while staying within the boundaries which every teacher in this study established (engaging for school purposes, being transparent and clear; not engaging with students on topics unrelated to school). If teachers can see how students are interacting—and indeed model interactions and engage with them—then discussions about what students see on Twitter, fake news, algorithms, and using Twitter as an agent of change become less abstract.
Teaching About Social Media Is Critical to Civic Education
Taken together, these findings indicate that teaching young people about social media is vitally important. Social media operates as part of the civic sphere. We are limiting our students’ potential as civic actors if we do not teach them about the ways in which social media works, including the ways in which it can manipulate users, spread misinformation, or cause harm.
Incorporating social media into civic education requires teaching students how to use social media, including its design and potential for harm (Greenhow et al., 2022). Understanding how social media creates echo chambers, how what is seen can be manipulated by both users and the platforms’ algorithms, and the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and deep fakes is now as much an issue for civic education as understanding the three branches of government. To ignore either sets individuals and the country up for a poorly informed and easily manipulated citizenry. Only once students know how social media works and how to use it with intention and care, they are then prepared to use it for civic participation.
These concerns are not reasons to avoid using social media in education; just the opposite. Ignoring issues or events which have harmed students does not increase their capacity or inclination to learn; it certainly does not make them feel that they are being seen, known, and valued (Chapman et al., 2021). Choosing to ignore multiple perspectives is certainly not a best civic education practice, and Toledo and Enright (2021) have rightly argued that it is unethical. Classrooms do not function as a microcosm of society in which young people learn how to be in community if that community does not recognize who they are or functions as an echo chamber. These are reasons for teachers to see teaching about social media as necessary for students’ civic engagement. Further, if teachers are going to teach with social media for civic education, their teaching must be thoughtful, intentional, and well-planned.
Teachers were scaffolded into their use of Twitter, whether introduced by a peer, or through peer-to-peer conversations in a professional development or graduate school context, or through their own initiative, as a tool which could be used in the classroom, and this introduction came at a time when the teachers had already done some thinking about what they wanted their students to be able to know and do. Thus, teachers were introduced to Twitter as a tool which could meet objectives they had identified for their students. Teachers could serve in a similar capacity for their students, acting as scaffolders so that students can learn and practice how to use Twitter and how to leverage its affordances for civic engagement. The following chapter will extend this argument to examine how teachers and students can use social media to disrupt oppressive hegemonic systems.
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Chapman, A.L. (2023). With a Little Help from Friends: Teaching About, with, and Through Social Media. In: Social Media for Civic Education. Palgrave Studies in Educational Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10865-5_8
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