Youth as Architects of Social Change by Sheri Bastien & Halla B. Holmarsdottir

Author:Sheri Bastien & Halla B. Holmarsdottir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Concluding Thoughts: Speaking Back in Changing Political Times

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 includes the call to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” In this project, the youth I have worked with have challenged Hong Kong citizens to make schools and society more inclusive and just for all its residents—including those described as ethnic minorities. From the youth responses, it is clear that there is a need for youth to participate in changing and potentially dismantling existing discriminatory systems and structures within the territory. The We Are Hong Kong Too youth continue to use social media as both producers and consumers including through the We Are Hong Kong Too archive, to articulate their sense of identity and civic engagement and to speak back to essentializing mass media discourses. Cellphilming as a DIY media-making practice and research method might be harnessed by youth around the globe, particularly by those who are interested in changing existing systems and structures and speaking back to images and practices that they find discriminatory or leading to exclusion. Researchers, teachers, practitioners, and activists working with youth across the globe might employ cellphilm method to encourage young people to share their ways of knowing through a refocusing of their already existing media-making and consuming practices.

Through a discussion of DIY media-making and sharing, Avtar, Yuna and Sabi, and Katrina’s cellphilm productions, as well as an archive of their cellphilms on YouTube, these practices are to be interpreted as instances of civic engagement where youth both discuss and problematize their experiences as citizens while making recommendations for social change. The ethnic minority youth participants in this study have engaged with cellphilming to speak back (Hooks, 1994; Mitchell & De Lange, 2013) to essentialized representations of ethnic minorities by creating their own critical media texts (Rogers, 2014). It is clear that cross-cultural exchanges and conversations about what it means to be a Hong Kong citizen—regardless of race, culture, or linguistic practices—are playing out in digital spaces and are assisted by the youth-produced cellphilms—even two years after the Occupy Movement began. I look back to Sabi and Yuna’s words as they articulated, “true citizenship is one who participates and gets involved in political affairs for a good cause and reason. So, after the [Occupy Central] protest, it actually proved that even though people are from different countries, but when in time of need, all the people can be one as Hong Kongers.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.