Digital activism: challenges and opportunities for language learning

Digital activism:
challenges and
opportunities for
language learning
Katerina Zourou, Ph.D.
University of Jyväskylä,
English guest seminars, 2020-2021
14 April 2021

Katerina Zourou, PhD
Web2Learn, Greece
Researcher in computer assisted language learning
Passionate about open and social learning
Advocate of open access, open and citizen science
A member of #LITHME COST action
Katerina Zourou, University of Jyväskylä, 14.4.2021
@web2learn_eu

University of Jyväskylä, 14.4.2021

Digital activism
Civic engagement for a social
purpose mediated by technology
Similar terms (but not
interchangeable in meaning):
citizen-driven
innovation, data activism,
guerrilla science, social and
environmental justice,
social computing, citizen
science, open production
communities, citizen
journalism, public
participation in scientific
research, hacktivism…

Digital activism
in the press…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/covid-19-has-ushered-new-era-digital-activism-global-leaders/

…completely bottom-up…

… or
institutionalised
(example: the
EUvsVirus hackathon
launched by the
European Commission
in April 2020)
21,000 participants, 140 nationalities, 27 countries, 23 languages, 600+ corporate partners, 1,400
mentors , 400 jury members, over 2,000 solutions created for coronavirus-related challenges

“In every crisis there is opportunity”
Several examples of participatory, citizen-driven
initiatives stemming from the collective effort to
fight COVID-19

Outline
Advancements in CALL: agency and social action in
L2; the digital wilds
Why should the CALL community care about digital
activism?
Examples of digital activism forms with potential for
L2 use
Impact on the CALL agenda

Framing of today’s talk
A tentative mapping of digital activism
features that depict their potential for L2
learning and open up research
perspectives in CALL.
Yet to come: data collection; evidence-
based research
Next steps: analyse L2 practices, assess
their language learning outcomes;
analyse socio-interactional affordances
of these settings

Recent developments in
Computer Assisted
Language Learning

Agency and social action in L2
• Sociocultural understandings of learning: emphasis on learners as social
actors shaping their discourse and identity through agentive action
• Agentive action (through participation) transforms and re-creates a new
world that becomes part of one’s own.
• Developments in technology (mobile devices that afford connection and
social interaction anytime and anywhere, social networking tools) offer
possibilities for user-driven, self, and group-initiated practices that
redraw models of production, distribution, and reuse of knowledge
(Lave, 1998; Thorne, 2010; Reinhardt 2018; Zhao, Ellison & Lampe, 2016; Warner & Chen, 2017)

Agency-autonomy-social participation in L2
“A pedagogy that leverages social media practices for developing L2
learner autonomy should support learner agency by promoting user
choice and self‐directed learning” (Reinhardt, 2018)
L2 learners increasingly craft learning trajectories through multiple
platforms and sites, including social networking ones.

Out-of-class learning
Learning that "occurs naturalistically, using resources not
specifically tailored for educational purposes and which are
situated outside of any institutional context" (Sockett, 2014).
A wealth of terms (Benson, 2011).
“Digital wilds” refer to non-instructionally oriented
contexts that support social activity (…) They
present (…) compelling opportunities for intercultural
exchange, agentive action, and meaning making”
self-access, out-of-school and
distance learning; informal, non-
formal and naturalistic learning;
non-instructed learning and
self-instruction; autonomous,
independent, self-directed and
self-regulated learning, and
learning beyond the classroom
(Thorne, Sauro, & Smith, 2015, Sauro & Zourou, 2019)

Why is digital activism
worth exploring by the
CALL community?

#1 Global ambitions
Contemporary social movements as ”Knowledge as a commons” (Hess &
Ostrom, 2005):
More opportunities for citizen access and (re-)use of knowledge (including
data) of public interest => more transparency on local, national, global levels
Opportunity to scale up civic engagement
• by making the knowledge circulation process fairer and
• by engaging citizens in shaping current and future policy agendas, cf. SDG
monitoring
Digital activism> datactivism, open governance, world open data day; SDG Global Festival of Action

#2 Impact and resonance
An individual has unforeseen power to achieve
impact and urge community action (cf. The
Silence Breakers; Greta Thunberg, #metoo,
#BLM)
=>A single call for action can trigger many new
forms of public engagement and a wealth of
interaction modalities
Digital activism> social and environmental justice; citizen science

#2 Impact and resonance
An individual has unforeseen power to
achieve impact and urge community
action (cf. The Silence Breakers; Greta
Thunberg)
=>A single call for action can trigger many
new forms of public engagement and a
wealth of interaction modalities
Digital activism> social and environmental justice;
Indicatively:
One-off protests, regular
marches, online awareness
campaigns, crowdfunding
campaigns, round tables, TV
shows, live streamed talks and
combinations of all the above

#3 Sociotechnical developments
Social connectivity (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Benkler, 2006, 2017)
Social networks as horizontal media
« Produsage » (Bruns, 2008)
Grassroots action;
« networked protests » (Tufekci, 2017)
Citizen journalism ; citizen science; guerilla science; guerilla fan translation (Vasquez, 2021)

Questions
• What opportunities for digital activism conducive to language use exist?
• What are the challenges?
• How can they shape the future CALL agenda?
• Ζοurou, K. 2021, Language learning as agency for a social
purpose: examples from the coronavirus pandemic. Alsic journal
https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/4880
• Zourou, K. 2020. A critical review of social networks for
language learning beyond the classroom. In Dressman, M. &
Sadler, R. (Eds.). Handbook of Informal Language Learning,
Wiley.

4 main types of
digital activism and
their potential for L2
use and learning
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs)
Hacktivism, data activism, and open practices
Grassroots activism
1.Citizen science

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) for a
social purpose
Examples: Eterna, Foldit@home, and Foldit.

#1:
Massively
multiplayer
online
games
(MMOGs)

Puzzle solving environment+ chat
#1:
Massively
multiplayer
online
games
(MMOGs)

Chat (help)
#1:
Massively
multiplayer
online
games
(MMOGs)

Perceived advantages and disadvantages for
L2 use and learning
- both chats (general and help) were conducted in only one
language (English). Languages other than English? Multilingual
repertoires?
+ the social dimension of game play (the most highly ranked in all
digital gaming studies in CALL, cf. Fischer & Thorne, 2012;
Reinhardt & Zander, 2011); motivations to meet a social purpose
(here: contribute to the fight vs Covid19)
#1:
Massively
multiplayer
online
games
(MMOGs)

#2: Hacktivism, data activism,
and open practices

EUvsVirus hackathon
#2:
Hacktivism,
data
activism
and
open
practices
Example of a (massive) hackathon

Some statistics
• 21,000 participants
• 140 nationalities
• 27 countries
• Speakers of 23 languages
• 600+ corporate partners
• 1,400 mentors
• 400 jury members
over 2,000 solutions to address coronavirus-related
challenges
#2:
Hacktivism,
data
activism
and
open
practices

“Remote working and Education” among the six categories of
challenges to be addressed
#2:
Hacktivism,
data
activism
and
open
practices

The online working environment: Slack
#2:
Hacktivism,
data
activism,
and
open
practices

+ 2 examples: Open Data Days and EU Datathon
Open data Days: Groups from around the world
create local events on the day where they use
open data in their communities.
 to show the benefits of open data and
 encourage the adoption of open data policies
in government, business and civil society.
EU Datathon: a competition for best teams
developing an application that uses open data
sets and is created for a social purpose
#2:
Hacktivism,
data
activism,
and
open
practices

L2 use and learning
- predominance of the English language as the international lingua franca, or
unilingual hackathons=> multilingual repertoires?
- Possible reason: quickness of interaction (in a 2-day) event as possible obstacle to
volunteers with basic/intermediate L2 skills
+ possibility to develop language skills in parallel to expert knowledge on
one’s field of expertise => particularly advantageous from a Content and
Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) perspective
#2:
Hacktivism,
data
activism,
and
open
practices

#3: Grassroots initiatives of
digital activism

A) grassroots initiatives
• Bottom-up activities launched and sustained by local, national, or
global communities
• Examples: Covid19Italia Help and many initiatives within the Maker
community
#3:
Grassroots
initiatives
of
digital
activism

B) maker movement
#3:
Grassroots
initiatives
of
digital
activism
emphasis on the value of an individual's ability to be
a creator of things.
For COVID-19: many maker communities around the
world engaged in the provision of medical supplies
(oxygen masks, personal protective equipment
including face shields, and devices such as oxygen
concentrators)
Example: US based Nation of Makers
Makers in almost 500 maker communities had
produced 7,196,842 items in 49 countries (June 1,
2020)

L2 use and learning
- an accessible maker space & equipment (for L2 learners to deploy
their skills)
+ L2 users encounter more opportunities for extended interaction
(compared, for instance, with shorter interaction cues at problem
solving MMOGs). in a bigger variety of interaction modalities
(synchronous/ asynchronous, blended)
Also, due to the numerous maker communities worldwide, more
opportunities to interact in languages other than English.
#3:
Grassroots
initiatives
of
digital
activism

#4: citizen science

“Citizen science is a broad term, covering that part of Open Science in which
citizens can participate in the scientific research process in different possible
ways: as observers, as funders, in identifying images or analysing data, or
providing data themselves. This allows for the democratisation of science,
and is also linked to stakeholders' engagement and public participation” (EC,
2020).
2 open access books:

#4: Citizen science projects

The way ahead: the
CALL agenda

Digital activism//formal education contexts
• “participation in civic activities help students reach their full potential
as creative individuals”
[DA] “can be aligned with existing high school curricula, to provide
motivating contexts for broadening social participation while deepening
subject-matter knowledge” (Lampe et al. (2010).
• In online language learning learning settings=> virtual exchange as a
promising, fertile field of inquiry
Check works by: Shannon Sauro, Steven Thorne, Catherine Jeanneau, Boris Vasquez-Calvo, Marie-
Thérèse Batardière, Marco Cappellini, Francesca Helm

Digital activism and language use/learning: is
the topic new?
Active citizenship;
socially informed
approaches to
learning; agency;
constructivism; also:
Illich’s Deschooling
society; language
socialisation in out-
of-class contexts
Impactful grassroots
action; social
networked publics;
fan communities and
fan practices;
guerrila forms of
action
Existing knowledge New knowledge
(A very rough interpretation!)

Challenges: very few analytical frameworks
An example: ”the reader-to-leader framework” on a Technology-Mediated
Social Participation framework (TMSP) by Preece & Shneiderman (2009)
The Reader-to-Leader Framework:

Location
The place in which a learning activity takes place (physical, online,
both)
Formality
Concerned with whether or not a learning activity is part of an
institutional programme possibly leading to qualifications.
Pedagogy
The degree to which instruction (learning materials, assessment, etc.)
is involved
Locus of
control
Degree of self or other-directed control; distribution of decisions
about learning
Chik (2014). Further explored in Benson 2017; Reinders & Benson (2017)
Another possible framework: Alice Chik’s framework for analysis
of out-of-class L2 gaming.

CALL studies conducted on the 4 digital activism types
Full reference: https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/4880#tocto1n6

Some concluding remarks (in progress)
• Need for more evidence-based research grounded in primary data (analysis
of player-to-player online discussion forums in MMOGs, assessment of the
linguistic complexity, etc.)
• From a research point of view, a need to focus more on the potential to use
and learn an L2 in many “wild” settings activity (though efficiency,
economies of scale, and developmental outcomes may differ).
• From a pedagogical perspective: a need to acknowledge learners as social
actors and to embrace language practice occurring in informal learning
settings.
• A need to open up CALL research on the wealth of forms of social action as
means to (L2) learning (citizen-driven innovation, heritage activism,
grassroots community learning, civic hacktivism, etc.)

Thank you to my colleagues on Twitter who replied to my question “What shouldn't
I forget to mention in my talk about languages and (digital) activism?

And resources they shared:
• How K-Pop Fans Actually Work as a Force for Political Activism in 2020
https://time.com/5866955/k-pop-political/
• Digital Technology and Democratic Theory. Data & Society podcast
https://listen.datasociety.net/episodes/digital-technology-and-democratic-theory
• Batardière, M.-T. (2018).Shaping-student-Engagement-in-online-intercultural-
communication https://www.slideshare.net/marie-
therese/slpc7shapingstudentengagementinonlineinterculturalcommunication
• https://www.laquadrature.net/en/
• https://www.ippolita.net/

Thank you! Questions?
Staying in touch:
katerinazourou@gmail.com
@web2learn_eu
Google scholar
Slides available at https://www.slideshare.net/Web2Learn_eu

Digital activism: challenges and opportunities for language learning

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