Social media literacy education for everyday activism: a design justice approach with women from refugee backgrounds

Abstract

The concepts of agency and everyday activism are increasingly being used to understand how marginalised communities use social media as part of their identity development and to navigate exclusionary systems of violence, oppression and control. Previous research has defined everyday activism as small-scale and mundane acts of resistance and resilience that move beyond agency, which refers to the capacity to act. While media literacy scholars and practitioners have explicitly focused on agency to design, implement and evaluate educational interventions, everyday activism has not received significant attention.

To address this gap, this study investigated how women from refugee backgrounds, residing in Western Sydney, understand and engage in everyday activism by using social media. It specifically considered the relationship between women’s everyday activist aspirations and their identity-making practices on social media. The primary aim of the study was to explore how local public libraries and refugee support organisations can design adult social media literacy education interventions for everyday activism with women—a timely and critical concern in the fields of digital literacy and media literacy.

The study found that identity-making on social media enhances the everyday activism of women from refugee backgrounds in four key ways: enabling opportunities for building caring and supportive communities, making women’s success stories visible, allowing women to explore intersectional identities that had hitherto been constrained by dominant groups, and guiding women in reclaiming the power to (re)define their identities and experiences. Building on these findings, the study emphasises the importance of placing the lived experiences, identities, and existing social media practices and literacies of women from refugee backgrounds at the starting point/forefront of any educational interventions designed for them. Given the absence of sustained support for adult social media literacy education in Australia, this study introduces a specific framework which includes a definition of social media literacy education that prioritises everyday activism, desired learning outcomes of educational interventions and a set of principles that can be adopted to co-design interventions with women from refugee backgrounds. These principles—endorsed by the staff members from refugee support organisations and public libraries who participated in this study—can be adopted by diverse stakeholders including community organisations, policymaking bodies and grassroots groups that seek to support marginalised women’s everyday activism.

Date of Thesis submission	2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Tanya Notley (Supervisor)