Introduction to critical literacies & social media

The post-truth era endures. In the last decade, the rise in vocabularies for naming, describing, and interrogating an increasingly complex flow of information and texts means that terms such as fake news, misinformation, and disinformation have taken root in everyday language use. Ongoing technological developments have brought digital tools, spaces, and practices into everyday formal and informal English language, literacy, and literary education. According to the Digital 2022: July Global Statshot Report, social media usage soared by 227 million during the 12 months before the report, reaching an estimated 4.70 billion users globally (We are social 2022) . Teachers face new sets of challenges with every new development and update.

The recent and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to this surge in use: both the infrastructure and usage of web-based technologies have increased in response to local, regional, and national lockdowns and travel restrictions. Greater access to online platforms has created opportunities for increased access to a broader range of texts and text types, discursive positions, interpersonal interactions and relationships, and ways to do civic participation.

Yet digital platforms are themselves positioned and positioning. Therefore, the need for critical literacies continues and intensifies, just as the role of social media in and out of classrooms raises questions about what English education could and does look like in the 21^st century. For instance, we know that access to diverse perspectives is not guaranteed online, given that algorithms and user selections produce curated, sometimes siloed feeds and push notifications. At some level, we risk accessing only the online media that fits with our existing beliefs, interests, and ways of thinking unless we consciously seek out other less visible points of view. More recently, the release and public use of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as Chat GPT and Bard have renewed concerns about mis/disinformation as well as plagiarism, while also sparking interest in their creative potential.

Equally, social media users (from young children to adolescents and adults) are (re)inventing ways of composing texts across modes, languages, and genres both inside and outside formal education. Marginalised groups are using social media to create communities of belonging as well as designing texts that speak back to histories of colonial erasure by foregrounding indigenous and anti-racist voices, queer culture, feminist politics, and so on. These increasingly visible practices reveal renewed possibilities for doing critical literacies in ways that are culturally sustainable and that draw on activist literacies to engage with English language, literacy, and literary education that is contextually relevant to the lives of students.

With an interest in this complex and evolving dynamic, the editors of this special edition called for submissions (including research articles, creative texts, professional reflections, and so on) from educational professionals, academics, activists, and community leaders that explored critical literacies through social media. This special edition was therefore underpinned by the following key questions about the relationship between critical literacies and social media:

1. What social media texts and/or platforms are being used (or might be used) in teaching English?

2. How are teachers capitalising on social media texts, platforms, and/or practices in the teaching of English?

3. What are the affordances and/or limitations of using social media in English education?

Previous and ongoing research and practice in digital and media literacies provides a strong foundation for exploring these questions (Bazalgette and Buckingham 2012). However, in bringing critical literacies to the fore, we also seek to make far more prominent those issues of power, identity, and literacy as a lived/living social practice that can be mobilised toward social justice, ethics, and equity. Each submission that we received attends to this in some way and we provide brief outlines of these articles below. First, however, we explore a micro-case of a social media event and its pedagogical potential for supporting the development of critical literacies in English education.

Micro-case study: Social media & the politics of representation

At the time of writing this editorial, British model and asexual activist Yasmine Benoit released a joint post with @lgbt about Benoit’s involvement with the Netflix series Sex Education. @lgbt is an online social media platform dedicated to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus (LGBTQ+) news, and the joint Instagram post focuses on an interview with Benoit where she discusses her involvement in developing the prominent character, O.

We consider this micro-case example as an isolated, singular, frozen moment (Burnett and Merchant 2011) of social media use through a critical literacies lens to expose its pedagogical utilities for English education and by doing so hope to spur on further practice and research in this vein. We conclude by signposting to some frameworks for doing critical literacies, critical media literacies, and critical digital literacies that may be usefully applied to social media texts and practices through critical literacies practised in classrooms.

The @lgbt and Benoit post consists of ten slides (lgbt 2023; visit the following link for the complete post: https://bit.ly/benoitse

Slide 1: The full-caps title text reads “Yasmin Benoit on writing asexuality into season 4 of Sex Education”, set on a portrait of Benoit.

Slide 2: News reporting-styled text from @lgbt about the interview, set to manipulated image-extract of O standing at a podium from Sex Education which is itself layered over a patterned purple, light-blue, and white ombre.

Slide 3: Direct quote from interview with Yasmin Benoit: “There’s a perceived lack of urgency when it comes to incorporating asexuality into LGBTQ+ issues and sexuality in general”. The background image of O spills over from previous slide onto this one. The continuous purple, light-blue, and white ombre background design suggests a single, continuous image or collage effect that runs across all the slides.

Slides 4 and 5: Direct quotes from Benoit on each slide are set against a manipulated image from Sex Education’s promotional poster which includes all the main characters: 1) “There’s usually a preference for the shy, nerdy asexual who doesn’t understand sexuality and struggles to navigate the world … and that’s fine to depict, but that isn’t the only asexual experience out there” (original emphasis), and 2) “I wanted to highlight intersectionality. Writing a character who is also an asexual woman of colour, who happens to be in a rivalry with a white guy, […] insinuating that he can do everything better than her”. Again, this image is layered on top of the ombre background and spills onto slide 5.

Slide 6: Three screenshots (image extracts) from Benoit’s Twitter/X account present her thread about O, the asexual character, and the intended character-design: 1) “I wanted to share something important regarding O’s character in Sex Education S4, as someone closely involved in creating her and the story. I’ve finally had time to watch the season and was disappointed to see that some important moments were cut out or changed”, 2) “O was not meant to be a villain. She was a WOC [woman of colour] being pushed out of a space she had found success in by a white guy who thought he deserved to be there more than her. She was meant to be the target of a petty smear campaign that led to her being outed”, and 3) “That doesn’t come across as much as it did in the script, but I’m grateful to have been able to work on the character and storyline, and I’m glad that people have enjoyed her anyway. I think that those who didn’t would have done if more of O’s moments were included”.

Slide 7: Reporting discourse from @lgbt is placed at the top of the post: “Even still, there is so much to be hopeful for, especially if ace creatives are included”. This is followed by a direct quote from Benoit: “I hope that we have a more diverse array of characters in the future, of different romantic orientations, different ages, with different rates of sexual participation, different races, different religions, and nationalities. I also hope that we continue to see asexual people getting to play a role in creating asexual characters”. The print-text (with the direct quote set in a white text box) is layered over an image of Benoit, which spills over into slide 8, and the continuous ombre background.

Slide 8: A direct quote from Benoit: “It’s really different to any asexual representation that’s out there, and I doubt it’s what people were expecting. It isn’t as cookie-cutter as a lot of other depictions, including the last attempt at an asexual character on this show, but it’s interesting, dramatic, deep, and it’s showing an asexual woman of colour in a role we don’t usually see”.

(original emphasis)

Slide 9: A final direct quote from Benoit: “I hope it expands people’s ideas of what an asexual person can be like and challenges the idea that being asexual means being ignorant about sexuality, or afraid of it. Asexuality is a type of sexuality, it’s all part of the same thing” (original emphasis). The quote is set against another image of the character O.

Slide 10: A salient heading that says “KEEP LEARNING” is followed by signposts to Benoit’s Instagram handle and the Netflix series, Sex Education. A fragment of the image of O spills onto this final slide, along with the ombre background.

The Instagram post is a combination of reporter discourse and interview extracts (reported speech) about the intentions behind the character design and how this is located in the politics of representation, diversity, and intersectionality. It is also multimodal, being composed of image-extracts (screenshots) from Benoit’s Twitter/X feed, manipulated images from the series, and portraits of Benoit. Interestingly, all ten slides (and their composite features of images, print-text, and layout) are constructed to give the impression of a single, long text that the viewer swipes to reveal. This is achieved by the continuous ombre background that sweeps across the slides as well as in the way the image-extracts from Benoit’s portraits and the Netflix series strategically spill over from one slide to the next. It is perhaps also noteworthy that the background ombre effect echoes some of the colours from the asexual pride flag: black, grey, white, and purple.

On one hand, the technical features of the post (as a text for analysis) are indeed interesting. The selection of print-text, images, colours, use of layout, the play with framing in creating the impression of a singular text, the captions, and so on all provide insight into the position of @lgbt as a media platform as well as Yasmin Benoit as an asexual model-activist. Beginning with the text and its composition is therefore one means to engage with critical literacies. Serafini (2011) explains that in order to comprehend multimodal texts, three main approaches might be adopted by teachers and teacher educators: 1) Art theory and criticism, 2) The grammar of visual design, and 3) Media literacy. In the first instance, art theory and criticism might draw on analytical processes such as that by Panofsky (1955), argues Serafini (2011, 344), as a means to create “an inventory of various components of a piece of art, and then identifying conventional meanings and considering the underlying philosophical ideas and interpretations constructed within the sociocultural context of its reception”. The grammar of visual design instead draws on the work of those such as Kress and Van Leeuwen, whose structuralist approaches have seen the gathering and development of a more systematic “taxonomy of the grammar and structures of visual design” (345). This taxonomy becomes useful in developing a vocabulary for identifying, naming, and explaining the features of multimodal texts by drawing reader-viewers’ attention to design techniques such as composition, perspective, symbols and icons, colour and hue, layout and reading path, and so on (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006) and then placing their use in sociocultural, historical, political, and ideological context in order to extrapolate intended and received meanings. Finally, Serafini (2011, 347) explains how media literacies are

defined in various contexts as the ability to critically understand, question, and evaluate how media work and produce meaning (Chauvin, 2003) and the ability to derive pleasure from mass media and choose selectively among popular cultural icons (Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999). Media literacy also involves the processes by which individuals take up cultural texts differently depending on their interests and positioning in various social and historical contexts (Messaris, 1997); and how production techniques of each medium interact with content elements to create meaning.

(Heiligmann & Shields, 2005)

Media literacy is therefore particular in its efforts to engage children and young people with the consumerist agendas that underpin the design and circulation of media and popular culture texts.

But, from the micro-case above, the production of the @lgbt post with/for Yasmin Benoit is also one that seeks to engage with the politics of representation, LGBTQ+ inclusion and social activism, as well as the nuances of intersectional justice (Crenshaw 1991). The design choices that are identifiable in this post are entangled in the practices of social media text production, identity politics, and activism. That is, design is bound to identity and power in sociocultural context. This is, at least in part, what the “critical” in critical literacies (Janks 2010) harkens to.

An article by Brown et al. (2017) traces the ways in which intersectional social media activism might be interlocked with critical literacy research and teaching practice. In their analysis of #SayHerName, they find that the hashtag provided a means to track digital social interactions between people across the world as a form of digital activism that “empowers Black women through new forms of knowledge and consciousness raising to push back against sexism, racism, and other oppressions” (Brown et al., 2017, 1841). Similarly, Amgott (2018) explored how digital activism and critical literacies intersect to produce opportunities for engaging learners with real and contextually-relevant social issues through the analysis and production of digital texts for and with authentic audiences in or beyond the school – from blogs and podcasts, to social media posts and comments. Articles in this edition of English in Education provide further snapshots into the possibilities for engaging children and young people with critical literacies through and with social media.

Finally, it is important to note that social media texts themselves are instantiations of a complex matrix of social, personal, institutional(ised), and cultural interactions that traverse virtual and material spaces. Our micro-case, for example, cannot be fully understood as a singular text of 10 slides on Instagram. It is, rather, one imprint of a series of interactions in relation to other posts by @lgbt and Yasmin Benoit, collaboratively and separately, on the issue of asexual representation – as it is situated in anti-racist, LGBTQ+, and popular culture representation more broadly. In many ways, this post, and Benoit’s commentary across these interrelated texts, suggest a kind of critical counter-narrative that resonates with critical literacies (Aronson, Meyers, and Winn 2020; Gonzales, Machado, and Plitkins 2023; Morrell 2003). It is also a living text. Comments to the post grow and change; interactions take place across different real and digital spaces. In this post these interactions may or may not become visible to different audiences depending on their geographical access point to the page (and the firewalls that may or may not inhibit access) or as a result of the social media algorithm that shapes individuals’ personal feeds. As we write, this editorial enters that matrix of meaning-making.

Burnett and Merchant (2011, 46) discuss this as the “boundlessness of social media” which complicates commonsensical assumptions about how texts work. Because of the ever-changing nature of online texts, particularly social media texts, and their entanglement with ongoing and sometimes unpredictable online practices, how critical literacies is conceptualised and used to engage with social media may require some rethinking. They suggest turning away from a focus on text and textual critique to a focus on practice(s), networks, and identity. Practice(s) relate to “what we do” and is “about an interrogation and evaluation of what we and others are actually doing on and off-line” (Burnett and Merchant 2011, 51); networks considers how (and indeed whether) certain communities and interactions are sustained or not and how this relates to different systems of power; and identity “explore[s] who it is possible to be in these different contexts and how that manifests itself” (p. 51). Queer and Trans students and (student) teachers may very well be following social media channels, such as @lgbt, to access information or feel a sense of belonging (Francis 2023)

Situating any critical analysis of social media texts within practices of meaning-making, networks of people and perspectives, as well as in the ongoing processes of identity re/construction resonates with critical literacies as a way of being and doing (Vasquez, Janks & Comber, 2019). Campano, Nichols and Player (2020, 143) seem to reiterate this understanding in their metaphor for critical literacies and multimodality:

Scholars of multimodality have looked at the ways texts are not monoliths, but rather, exist as a constellation of communicative modes, and critical literacy scholars have recognized the ways that readers’ identities condition their engagement with texts.

Social media platforms and the real-virtual social semiotic (inter)actions (Kress, 2015) that they come to represent are the basis for this “constellation of communicative modes” where multiple literacies and sign systems operationalise complex negotiations of power, identity, and ideology. For classroom learners and (student) teachers, this suggests that drawing on social media texts (or constellations of texts) becomes a means to bridge in- and out-of-school literacy practices and intertextual references. Tapping into the practices and logics of social media use (such as posting, commenting, publishing on closed and public online forums, etc.) may be a means to capitalise on young people’s existing literacy skills in contexts of formal teaching and learning. What, then, are the affordances and limitations of social media for producing counter-narratives, critical (re)designs, and engaging in civic participation?

Finally, these complexities are perhaps now being further intensified with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as sometimes separate and sometimes integrated software. In an already hypermediated world, AI presents yet another mode for mis- and dis-information as well as misrepresentation. That is, to what extent are bias, prejudice, and (symbolic) violence entrenched into social media algorithms and AI processes? What assumptions about intersectional difference and diversity might be intensified by an already positioned and positioning digital environment, and what are the lived and real-world consequences (particularly for the most marginalised)? How do these systems curate individual feeds, and how does this shape identities in empowering and/or problematic ways? For instance, just as the micro-case example from @lgbt and Benoit might be regarded a counter-narrative text in the negotiations of race, gender, and sexuality, other examples such as the case of Andrew Tate (Pannen 2023; Sayogie et al. 2023) demonstrate how social media practices and texts might also mobilise misogyny, queer and transphobia, and toxic masculinities.

While it is beyond the scope of this editorial to explore these issues in depth, we hope that our discussion provides a springboard for teachers, learners and students, teacher educators, and academics to explore these questions and issues in more detail. Various models or examples of practice for doing and perhaps reinventing critical literacies might provide useful ways into engaging with/through social media in contextually and culturally relevant (Gonzales, Machado, and Plitkins 2023; Ladson-Billings 2014, 2023) and sustainable ways (Paris 2021; Paris and Alim 2014): from queer critical literacies (Govender and Andrews 2021; Wargo 2019) and Janks’ (2013) interdependent model, to living literacies (Pahl and Rowsell 2020) and the decolonial turn (Govender 2023; Perry 2020), to multimodal literacies (Talib 2018; van Leeuwen 2017).

Although not extensive, each of these frameworks and/or examples of research-informed practice suggests possibilities for working with social media in English (language and literacy) education that promote civic participation, critical-creative-affective engagements with texts and meaning-making, and the development of critical consciousness with youth and (student) teachers. The submissions to the special edition bring further, practical insights into this complex dynamic. In the following section, we provide a brief overview of these contributions.

Doing critical literacies with/through social media

Jennifer Alford presents a case study of migrant and refugee-background youth’s experiences and uses of critical literacies in- and out-of-school by drawing on an asset-based approach to literacy research. Importantly, Alford states that they seek “not to identify mis-alignment between in-school and out-of-school practices, but to understand the richness of these students’ critical literacy needs and wants, framed in a way that recognises their diversity and interests”. The study draws on qualitative data from two different Australian secondary schools – including interviews with two English language teachers, focus groups with a total of 10 English Additional Language (EAL) learners, teaching resources, and video recordings. The use of Fairclough’s (2003) concept of “recontextualisation in action” enabled Alford to trace these literacy practices across in- and out-of-school contexts, with a particular focus on online literacy practices such as social media. The key findings include how young people take their awareness of multimodal composition into their everyday lives to help them evaluate the trustworthiness of online texts, conduct (in)formal research to find out more about what it is they’re seeing on social media and other online platforms, as well as their capacities to understand the positioning power of those texts and platforms. Given the valuable insights that the young people, and their teachers, offer in this study, we are inclined to agree with Alford’s concluding recommendation that English teachers should “continue to teach critical literacy lessons and to link this more clearly to outside, situated language and literacy experiences”.

Elizabeth Baker, a teacher-researcher also located in Australia, focuses their attention on the critical visual literacy component of the curriculum through the lens of Halliday’s (1985) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) grammar of visual design. These provided a framework for working with 40 learners, aged 11, to evaluate and redesign their school website as a form of apprenticeship into political participation. Learners’ voices come through clearly in the transcript extracts, demonstrating how they notice and learn to critique the visual grammars of power working through their school website. Race/ethnicity and gender feature prominently in these discussions and become the apex upon which their redesign choices are made, using critical literacy’s concern for more socially just and equitable discursive design that more accurately represents the school population. While the learners in this study “demonstrate[d] their growing awareness of the power structures within texts”, it is also noted that teachers’ own pedagogical choices served to apprentice learners into authentic discursive redesign as a form of political participation.

Finally, Mary Rice offers pedagogical insights into their use of memes for teaching critical visual literacies in the United States. Memes continue to be an important social media genre. They represent, in many ways, the social media problematic where unpredictable responses to contemporary cultural or political events and/or issues emerge from multiple often untraceable sources, which then circulate in critical and/or humorous ways, and are re/decontextualised with a wide range of possible effects to potentially large audiences (see, for instance, Wiggins and Bowers 2015). The circulation of memes, or not, in itself may suggest what dominant value-systems are at play at a given time, or may raise the question of who does or does not have access to the practices of creating, publishing, sharing, redesigning, and re-appropriating memes. Whole social media platforms (such as 9Gag and Reddit) are dedicated to generating, redesigning, and sharing memes. Mary Rice’s pedagogical framework helps to attend to these issues by offering 5 layers of analysis when working with memes: 1) technical construction, 2) Formal aesthetic, 3) Aesthetic response, 4) Media context, and 5) Social context. Learners are encouraged to explore both the text and the practices within which it is entangled to build a critical visual literacy.

Conclusion & future directions

Social media’s boundlessness (Burnett and Merchant 2011) is perhaps both a danger and a gift. While it may be a means for young people (with access to digital devices and an internet connection) to find important information or even spaces of belonging, it is also rife with mis-/disinformation. Yet, as we hope the articles in this special issue suggest, critical literacies that actively draw hope and strength from the complex resources and funds of knowledge about social and digital media that young people bring with them to school can – and should – help to guide our next steps as educators in the English classroom.