Description
Book SynopsisThis open access book provides the theoretical and pedagogical foundations for a promising new approach to civic education: using social media to teach civics. While many measures indicate that youth civic engagement has long been in decline, many of these measures fail to take into account all of the ways that youth can interact with civic life. One of these understudied ways is through social media, including platforms like Twitter, where young people have the opportunity to encounter the news, engage with people in power, and bring attention to the needs in their community. Throughout this volume, Chapman explores how and why teachers can use social media to teach civics, as well as how it might meet the needs of students in ways other approaches do not.
Table of Contents1 Introduction: Reclaiming Civic Education
2 Is Twitter for the Birds? The Young and the Restless Don’t Think So
3 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: How Social Media Operates in the Civic Sphere
4 The Study: Teachers’ Use of Twitter for Civic Education
5 #CivicEd: Teachers’ Stories of Connection, Civics, and Social Media
6 (Digital) Citizenship: Dissenting from Indifferenc
7 Nurturing a Capacity That May Well Be Limitless: Supporting Student Worth as a Matter of Civic Urgency
8 With a Little Help from Friends: Teaching About, with, and Through Social Media
9 The Margins Don’t Get Erased by Simply Insisting that the Powers That Be Erase Them: Social Media as a Disrupter
10 Conclusions: My Liberation Is Bound Up with Yours
