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 Citation2022) . 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 21st 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.