Fostering global digital citizenship: diaspora youth in a connected world
Fostering global digital citizenship: diaspora youth in a connected world
This project aims to identify the global digital citizenship dimensions of diaspora youth’s everyday digital media use. We intend to use a new approach in order to investigate how these practices can be fostered through digital citizenship policy and programs to improve the inclusion and participation of culturally diverse youth and maximise their effectiveness. Expected outcomes include advances in understandings about the opportunity and capacity of diaspora youth experience. Findings will be used to strengthen digital citizenship initiatives in Australian secondary schools, connect them more closely to global citizenship education programs, and enhance the engagement of a diverse student body.
This project will build an evidence-base to identify everyday citizenship practices fostered through diaspora youths’ transnational digital media use. This evidence-base will be used to expand and strengthen digital citizenship programs in Australian secondary schools, enhancing connections with global citizenship education. Currently, programs disproportionately focus on risks that local and transnational digital flows pose to social cohesion. Apart from marginalising an already vulnerable group, this limits the capacity for programs to recognise and foster the transnational digital skills and competencies of a broader cross section of diaspora youth.
The project will address four aims:
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To identify the types of transnational digital media practices Australian diaspora youth (aged 13-16), from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, engage in;
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To explore what types of citizenship orientations and skills are fostered through these digital media practices;
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To compare how the findings align with, or depart from, conceptualisations of digital citizenship, as it is currently defined and implemented in existing Australian school curricula and programs; and
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To create evidence-based benchmarks and recommendations to inform digital citizenship school-based programs that enhance their inclusivity and legitimacy for a culturally diverse student population.
RESEARCH TEAM
Dr Amelia Johns (University of Technology Sydney)
Dr Jessica Walton (ADI)
Professor Anita Harris (ADI)
Dr Gilbert Caluya (The University of Melbourne)
Project Funding
This project is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (DP190100635)