Beyond #Talking and #Texting: African Immigrant Youth’s Social–Civic Literacies and Negotiations of Citizenship Across Participatory New Media Technologies

Researchers increasingly call for examination of the potential of participatory new media technologies to reframe practices of citizenship teaching and learning and civic action. We draw upon a qualitative, interpretive case study of nineteen second- and 1.5-generation African immigrant youths to examine multiple, shifting conceptualizations of citizenship and negotiations of civic identities across diverse local/global, on/offline participatory new media technologies. We point to ‘social–civic’ literacies as emerging and complicating spaces of political literacy, civic identity constructions, and formal/informal citizenship teaching and learning opportunities. We draw implications for productive debate across shifting notions of citizenship, democratic education and participatory new media technologies in English and Social Studies classrooms.