Keywords

Most of the teachers in this study wanted to use social media with their students to disrupt unjust systems in their communities. Although the teachers were not as successful in changing these inequitable systems as they would have hoped, this chapter presents social media as a potential challenge to those unjust systems. Applying the work of the teachers in this study more broadly, civic education is often traditional, functioning to maintain systems which are currently in place (Apple, 1996; Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993; Fitzgerald et al., 2021). Civic education itself is also impacted by these unequal systems: schools in more affluent areas have stronger civic education programs (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Hahn, 1999). Consequently, new pedagogical approaches are needed to support young people in critical citizenship work, which seeks to make systemic change to oppressive systems (Chapman & Greenhow, 2021; Logan et al., 2022). Further, students who are marginalized or vulnerable can find community and connection via social media, and social media can serve as a tool for civic participation and activism which promotes individual and community thriving. This chapter will also discuss how teachers can support students in using social media for social justice-oriented civic participation.

Civic Education and Social Justice Concerns

There are inherent inequalities in civic education, which have persisted for decades and appear to be increasing (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Hahn, 1999; Hanson et al., 2018). Academically successful students are not equally and evenly dispersed throughout schools, and both the IEA study (Hahn, 1999) and Niemi and Chapman’s (1999) study showed that more academically successful students came from schools with high socioeconomic demographics. This “civic education gap” has not only increased in the last 20 years, and further research has found that disparities between children of different races to be as significant as the earlier research around socioeconomic disparities (Hanson et al., 2018).

In national civic assessments (NAEP), research has shown significant differences between the civic understanding of Black, Latino, and white students. White students score the highest on measures of civic understanding, and scores for both Black and Latino students are considerably lower, falling between the 10th and 25th percentile of the scores of white students (Hanson et al., 2018). Over a span of 16 years (1998–2014), the difference in median scores on national civic assessments between white and Black students increased, though the gap between white and Latino students decreased slightly over the same time period (Hanson et al., 2018). The gap in civics assessments is also wider than the gaps between the same groups in either math or reading (Hanson et al., 2018).

It is important to note here that just as academically successful students are not evenly distributed among all schools, students of all races are also not evenly distributed among schools in the United States. A long history of racial segregation in housing has resulted in neighborhoods which are not racially diverse (Rothstein, 2015); this de jure segregation has, in many areas, also perpetuated intergenerational poverty (Reardon, 2016). As a result, public schools are also often not diverse, based on race or income, as they are largely and often made up of the population from the surrounding neighborhood (Rothstein, 2015). Thus, the gap between Black, Latino, and white students is not because those students are in the same classes receiving the same civic education but responding differently; rather, it is that schools whose populations are largely made up of students who have historically been marginalized are not providing, or do not have the resources to provide, equivalent civic education for their students.

These findings are both appalling and deeply troubling for American democracy. In a system of government which relies on the informed and active participation of many, schools are failing to provide civic preparation equal to the task of inheriting democracy for wide swaths of the population. Further, gaps centered on racial and economic differences only serve to continue to perpetuate the lack of equity in political representation for historically minoritized groups as well as continuing to minimize voices which have long been ignored or suppressed. These inequities exist in sharp contrast to the ideals and purpose of American democracy.

Students Who Are Marginalized or Vulnerable

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these gaps in civic education which exist between students of different races and income levels correspond to a civic engagement gap (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Levinson, 2012). Just as civic education is not equally and equitably offered to all students due to historical and ongoing marginalization, the opportunities for civic engagement by marginalized students are similarly impacted by structural oppression (Atkins & Hart, 2003; Kirshner, 2015; Sánchez-Jankowski, 2002). As a result, young people who are marginalized or vulnerable—often around racial or economic lines—participate in the civic sphere (in traditional ways in which this is measured) less than white or more affluent students (Fitzgerald et al., 2021). An important caveat is that historically disadvantaged students engage in civic life in ways which are often not measured (e.g., translating for members of their community; Stepick et al., 2008; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2015), these types of civic engagement are also often not supported in civic education in schools (Kirshner & Ginwright, 2012).

This picture sounds bleak, but research has also shown ways in which schools and teachers can foster all students’ civic education and include support for a wider range of civic engagement. While there is a wide variety of such activities, such as examining civic issues through a critical lens (Hipolito-Delgado & Zion, 2015), inquiry-based learning (Hipolito-Delgado & Zion, 2015), and transformative relationships with adults (Chapman & Miller, 2022), scholars have argued for the potential of social media as a lever of change for civic education for marginalized youth (Durham, 2019; Garcia et al., 2019). While many young people can and do engage in both civic learning and civic action through social media, historically disadvantaged youth are more likely to do so through out-of-school methods such as social media (Fitzgerald et al., 2021).

Another component of civic learning which has been effective civic education has been community involvement. From service learning (Bringle & Clayton, 2012) to facilitating conversations about social justice which promote understanding and change (Aldana et al., 2012) to grassroots organizing (Checkoway & Aldana, 2013), working with members of the community has been shown to be an important means of civic education. Research has shown that people can form community on Twitter, even among accounts with whom they interact only as consumers of others’ posts (Gruzd et al., 2011). Twitter also has played a role in the types of community involvement which engage young people, such as through hashtag movements (Pew, 2012, 2016; Preston, 2011; Shear, 2018). The use of social media in education presents a real opportunity to teach and support youth in engaging in social change.

At the same time, coming of age in the twenty-first century has not been easy. Opportunities for young people, particularly those who come from historically marginalized communities, have been limited. In the last 20 years, we have been living in a time of increasing social inequality in the United States, which in turn has had political and economic implications (Kaltmeier & Breuer, 2020). For young people, this social upheaval has not been the only disrupter to their transition to adulthood. Sociocultural and identity factors, such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, have also influenced educational and employment prospects (Loader et al., 2014). This context is critical to thinking about how we reform civic education. The experiences of marginalized youth, as well as the need to understand, navigate, and change our politically polarized culture present an opportunity to reimagine civic education as centering on the experiences of those who have been historically excluded from civic life—including young people—as a way of countering social injustice. That civic education needs to be reformed is an idea accepted across the political spectrum (Vasilogambros, 2021); that this should be done by centering on historically marginalized voices is not (Fitzgerald et al., 2021).

Civic Education Often Perpetuates a More Traditional Worldview

Civic education in the United States has largely functioned to maintain a traditional worldview. Most civic education focuses on providing students with information about the U.S. system of government and military successes (Lopez et al., 2006), and due to these priorities, a lack of time and resources (Hanson et al., 2018) and the importance accorded to civic education compared to STEM fields (U.S. Department of Education, 2019), mainstream civic education has neither changed nor supported societal change. Going back decades, research has shown that the field of civic education has deliberately avoided examining civic life more critically, favoring instead a more traditional and informational approach which celebrates the American style of government (Apple, 1996; Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993). More recently, a systematic literature review of the research on civic education from 2009 to 2019 found that little research on ways to support the civic education of marginalized populations, calling for further research on pedagogies which might be effective with those who are currently being underserved in regards to their civic education (Fitzgerald et al., 2021). We also know that civic education calls for active civic participation but often does not offer students ways in which to practice acting in the civic sphere (Kahne & Middaugh, 2008).

Despite its critically important function of maintaining democracy, civic education provides students with limited information without providing them with opportunities to meaningfully engage with and use that knowledge to become the active citizens we need, a system which disproportionately impacts those who have been historically and systemically disadvantaged. What seems to have been lost in maintaining this traditional approach to civic education is that one can know how their country is governed, love that country, and want it to fulfill its earliest and highest ideals by promoting the thriving of all at the same time. Consequently, civic education celebrates the promise of America without acknowledging that that promise has yet to be fulfilled for some—and that it is our collective job to address that unfulfilled promise.

Applying Social Media to Problems of Civic Education

One of the ways in which the literature bases of civic education and social media in education intersected through the study that is the center of this book was in the way that the concept of openness, central to effective civic education, was bolstered by the open nature of social media. Civic education is most successful when classrooms are open and democratic; this openness described a school and classroom climate in which students felt comfortable asking questions or challenging what teachers are teaching; where discussion of controversial topics was encouraged; where learning occurred through active discussions and debates; where disagreements between students were allowed or encouraged; and that are safe spaces where students can think and question without fear of being shut down or being humiliated (Hahn, 1999). Students from classrooms with these open characteristics scored higher on measures of civic knowledge and civic skills than students from more closed classrooms (e.g., classrooms in which the climate did not encourage or allow disagreement or discussion of controversial topics) (Campbell, 2005; Gibson & Levine, 2003; McIntosh et al., 2007; Pasek et al., 2008; Torney-Purta, 2002).

Similarly, the use of social media in education has been shown to break down barriers to learning (Manca & Ranieri, 2013; Manca & Ranieri, 2016). Manca and Ranieri in their review of the research on Facebook as a tool for learning and teaching (Manca & Ranieri, 2013, Manca & Ranieri, 2016) found three main educational affordances of this social media: (1) it combined learning and information sources; (2) increased one’s community of learners; and (3) expanded the contexts of learning. In particular, their review showed that social media supported some of the primary methods through which an open classroom climate is practiced: discussion, interaction, and collaboration among students as well as between teachers and students. These affordances could provide students with a safe space to ask questions, discuss controversial topics, disagree with peers or instructors, and raise minority opinions, all of which are components of an open classroom climate which is supportive of effective civic education.

The question then becomes: did the teachers in this study use this previously identified affordance of social media to create or maintain an open civic classroom climate? There is evidence that they did. The teachers in this study used Twitter to create or maintain an open, democratic classroom climate, as advocated in the civic education literature, and the ways in which they did this resonated with what previous research has found. For instance, they used Twitter to expand the contexts of learning beyond the classroom walls and enhance their students’ connection to the community or the larger society. Each of the teachers in this study used Twitter to break down barriers and to promote student thought, student voice, and student agency, hallmarks of open and democratic classrooms.

This finding is important because a lack of openness in the classroom or school climate has been one of several common problems identified in the literature as impeding the success of civic education. In previous civic education literature, these climates which hindered effective civic education had policies which prevented discussion or discouraged students from speaking (Hahn, 1999). Each of the teachers in this study used Twitter in some way for discussion, whether as a prompt in class or as an out-of-class activity. Although the teachers in this study did not have difficulty with either classroom climate or fostering student discussion, it is possible to see how a teacher who was working in a school which did not promote student discussion could benefit from using Twitter as a means to have students debate topics and share their ideas.

Critical Digital Citizenship: Using Twitter to Disrupt Unjust Systems

Social media have further ways to support civic learning and participation in young people. In particular, Twitter can be both a means and a place for critical civic participation. Theorists and researchers have shown that adding a critical lens (Pope, 2014; Seider & Graves, 2020)—one through which we examine the experience of all, but particularly of those whose experiences have been excluded—and justice-oriented citizenship (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) provide insight on the ways in which civic education can be reformed. At a time when young people have access to engaging in the civic sphere at their fingertips through social media, it is imperative that we understand and teach in ways which promote student civic engagement through this critical lens (Chapman & Greenhow, 2021; Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Logan et al., 2022).

Further, it has been argued that social media can serve as a disruptor or a tool which allows people to engage in social change (Durham, 2019; Fitzgerald et al., 2021). As previously mentioned, teachers and educational technology scholars have been arguing for a turn toward understanding and implementing critical digital citizenship as a way of engaging young people as civic actors in ways which acknowledge the potential harms of social media while also leveraging its affordances for social change (Logan et al., 2022). Critical pedagogies honor the experiences and personhood of students and provide them with approaches to challenge unjust systems (Freire, 1972, 74; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Applied to ways in which youth engage online, critical digital citizenship frames young people’s use of Twitter and other social media as a means of challenging dominant power structures (Logan et al., 2022).

Although research in this area is nascent, this study and others have found that both teachers and students hope to use Twitter and other social media platforms to disrupt oppressive systems (Chapman & Greenhow, 2021; Xenos et al., 2014). One such study indicated that broadening our understanding of civic participation provided evidence of considerable youth civic engagement (Sloam, 2014). Specifically looking at the role social media played in protest movements, Sloam found that young people used Twitter to share information about their protests and to voice their own opinions about what they were protesting. Further, the young people who were protesting online brought those protests from the digital civic square to the physical one, employing the blended online/offline critical digital citizenship discussed by the teachers in this study. Consequently, Sloam (2014) argued, being able to use Twitter in this way deepened young people’s civic participation. Similarly, another study showed that as students’ social media use increased, so too did their engagement with politics (Xenos et al., 2014).

While the teachers in this study were not ultimately effective in engaging students to use Twitter to challenge hegemonic systems, that this was one of their intentions speaks to the potential of Twitter to foster this type of civic education and civic engagement. Several of the teachers in this study observed that their students were marginalized: Donna’s students were isolated due to their rural geographic location; Leo believed many of his students went unheard due to their age; and one of Jed’s desires was to use Twitter to establish and maintain relationships between his school’s predominantly white students and the students who attended the other district high school, who were predominantly Black. Will provided a notable counterexample: from his place of comparative privilege, he did not see a need to disrupt any system, and so his use of Twitter, meant to prepare his students for adulthood, also functioned in ways which maintained their privilege. The results of this study are particularly promising as the results showed that social media use was more impactful upon a young person’s civic engagement than was their socioeconomic status (Xenos et al., 2014). While such results need to be repeated, this research points to the possibility of social media as an effective way of encouraging and hearing historically marginalized voices.

Civic education often is limited by presenting only traditional understandings of citizenship and functions to maintain the societal systems which are already in place. As we work to reimagine what civic education can and should be, we would do well to consider any reform from a critical digital citizenship lens. By intentionally seeking out ways to include historically marginalized voices, and by incorporating Twitter as one pedagogical approach, we are better equipping all students to inherit our Republic. However, doing this well will require teachers to be prepared to teach with and about social media. These points will be further addressed in the chapter which follows.