Participatory Culture for Social Justice: Students Deploying New Media as a Call to Action and Social Change

This case study explores the experiences of two university faculty members who guided their students in the development of digital media artifacts in a participatory media space for an authentic audience. A sociology instructor guided her students in the creation of artifacts documenting issues of racial inequality on campus. Students presented university data on race and ethnicity, recorded videos depicting the personal narratives of students of color, and remixed media from university archives into an interactive map which displayed evidence of racism on campus. After sharing her classroom experience with colleagues in the law school, a second instructor was inspired to conduct a similar project. Law students developed artifacts to educate the public on the difficulties of immigration and the policy barriers which hamper lawful attempts to immigrate to the United States. Each class curated their artifacts online, prompting others to explore the materials and encouraging reuse of the materials in both formal and informal educational settings. Halverson’s design principles for participatory media spaces are used to frame and make meaning of the faculty participants’ experiences.