The document discusses the educational potential of social media in classrooms, advocating for its use in character journaling to engage students in literature and social contexts. It highlights the current bans on social media in schools as counterproductive, while emphasizing the importance of teaching safety and appropriate use. The author presents a study demonstrating how social media can enrich student learning and understanding by facilitating interactive, multimodal, and socially mediated literary analysis.

1. Character Journaling
Through Social Media
Culturally Relevant,
Research Based – and
Banned
John Wesley White, Ph.D.
University of North Florida
Presented at the Conference on English Education National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Summer 2013
See Also:
White, J.W., & Hungerford-Kresser, H. (May 2014). Character journaling through social networks: Exemplifying
tenets of the New Literacy Studies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 57(8), 642-654.
Full Article available at: http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

2. The Big Issue
 The Promise: Social media has immense and largely untapped
potential as a classroom educational tool: it is culturally relevant,
interactive, multimodal, cross-genre, and inherently social; as such it
reflects numerous tenets of contemporary literacy theory (i.e., the New
Literacy Studies). When predicated upon strong theory and modeled
after—or expanded upon—effective examples of classroom uses, social
media can be an effective tool for engaging a new generation of
students in explorations of literature, history, language, politics, culture,
etc.
 The Problem: Rather than examine ways in which teachers might
appropriately and effectively use social media to engage today’s
students (and to teach about social networking safety) school
administrators and state legislators have instead banned social media
from classrooms, citing numerous but seldom justified safety concerns.
The tide is slowly starting to change as administrators see that “the cat
is already out of the bag.” But they need a rationale for its use and
models showing how it can be used effectively.
 The Project: Highlighting the shortsightedness of all-out bans on social
media in classrooms, the following slides chronicle a study in which my
students and I used social media as the forum for interactive and
multimodal character journaling. The results of the study demonstrate
that social media can engage students in a way no other media or
pedagogical approach can: in ways that bring the very notion of
socially mediated learning to life.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

3. Social Media in the “Real World”
 Almost half of all adults in the ‘developed world’ use social media, a
trend that is spreading to poorer nations 1
 Over a billion people use the two largest social media sites
(Facebook and Twitter) daily, a statistic that does not account for
the myriad other social media both extant and emerging.
 Americans (and others) are getting their news from social media:
Readership of the nation’s seven largest newspapers account for
“only 36% of the average daily unique visitors of Facebook”. 2
 Adolescents and young adults are social media’s largest audience
by far; they access social media—anywhere and at any time—
primarily through smart phones. 1
 These young people are increasingly using social media as their primary
means of communication with friends and family 3
 Adolescents’ need to be in “constant contact” with peers is increasingly
recognized as a unique cultural trait (rather than as a pathology) 4
 Young people are already learning—albeit informally and sometimes
negatively—from social media 5
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

4. Social Media in Schools
 Administrators Love Social Media:
 School districts encourage principals to use social media for outreach
to parents, local communities, and especially for fundraising. 6
 Almost all teachers and many, if not most, school administrators
regularly use social media for communication, for entertainment, and
for learning (both at home and at work)
 Administrators Hate Social Media:
 Virtually all public school districts in the U.S. have banned or severely
limited access to social networking in classrooms, 7 most commonly
because they:
 see students’ need to stay in contact with peers as a pathology;
 see social networking in classrooms as an educational distraction;
 see social media as another avenue for cyber-bullying;
 fear students will use social media to cheat on exams;
 fear teachers and students will “friend” each other, promoting inappropriate
relationships. 8
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

5. The Two Faces of Schools and Social Media
Essential Tool
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

6. Schools’ Response to Social
Media in Classrooms:
Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

7. A Rationale for Using Social Media in
Classrooms (& especially for literacy instruction)
 Social media is culturally relevant to today’s
students
 Almost all adolescents and young adults are already using social
media
 Almost all young adults have access to social media (even without
computers or the internet) 1
 Social Media = Marker of Cultural Identity: “The students we teach
today are the products of a very different environment, one in which
the ability to stay connected with others is constant” (Sweeny 2010,
p. 121).
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

8. A Rationale for Using Social Media in
Classrooms (& especially for literacy instruction)
 Social media exemplifies & makes use of socially
mediated learning and major tenets of the New
Literacy Studies
 Learning influences and is influenced by social contexts 9
 Literacy is an inherently social practice 10
 Literacy is no longer relegated to print; the “digital turn” in new
literacies and communications technologies 11
 True literacy is multimodal and comprised of multiple literacies 10
 Readers and learners work within complex sociocultural and
polylinguistic systems to create new, varied, contextualized, and
sometimes negotiated meanings from information 12
 Readers and writers change discourses per contexts; characters (and
all of us) engage in code switching to suit our contexts and intent 13
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

9. A Rationale for Using Social Media in
Classrooms (& especially for literacy instruction)
 Practicality
 Social Media is ubiquitous; it’s in our classrooms regardless of our
best efforts to stop it
 Students can access social media anywhere via their telephones
(fewer excuses for not doing work)
 It’s free (including some of the ‘school friendly’ social media sites)
 Social media can give teachers a means for unobtrusive and
authentic assessment of student participation, reading
comprehension, understanding, etc.
 Facilitates multi-genre writing and a multi-genre project
 There is a pressing need to teach students about safety on social
media
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

10. acebook: A Virtual Maycomb, Alabama
(1936)
Alabama, 1936
Using social media as
the primary forum for
textual analysis (via
character journaling),
we created a virtual
depression era
Maycomb, Alabama
(1936), the fictitious
setting of Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird
Assuming the role of a
character and creating
a social media page
for that character,
students spoke both
through and for their
characters—in thought
and in language—as
we read the novel.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

11. Student/
Character
(e.g., Scout)
Posts
Network
Student/
Character
(e.g., Tom) Posts Posts
Hub
Instructor
(Atticus)
Creativity
(students’ choice of
photos, artwork,
quotes, music, film,
Student/
Character
(e.g., Jem)
Posts
Student/
Character
(e.g., Mayella)
etc.)
Historical &
Contextual
Research
Textual
Information
Textual
Inferences
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

12. Knowing One’s Character
 Research:
To create each character’s social media “home” page, students
first had to learn about the social and historical contexts of the
depression-era south. To complete a page on social media (in
our case using Facebook), students had to
1. Find photos that might represent their characters
2. Choose their characters’ “likes” (music, movies, books, political
beliefs, religion, etc.) that would ‘fit’ with the era
This minor level of research provided students with additional context
and prior knowledge. Many, for instance, had no understanding of the
types of music or movies popular in that era before creating their
pages.
See Examples, following slides
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

13. Screen shots of two
student created
character Facebook
pages
Also see Slide #23, the Atticus Finch page
(created & used by instructor)
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

14. Growing One’s Character
 Close Reading & Reacting to Contexts:
Characters’ pages had to change with the contexts of the novel
(in what the student/character posted in via visual and other
modalities).
Dill’s profile picture changed
from an image from the
1962 film to this image Mayella Ewell added this
image to back up her
consistent claim that she
was not racist
Scout added this image and a
“Playbill” to announce her role in
the school play. She also invited
her peers to the play via Facebook’s
“Events” tab.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

15. Scaffolding Reading & Providing Context
 Even lesser characters played a role in scaffolding
reading for other students. Each character’s posts
provided additional context to the story. Some posts
provided actual historical context for the novel itself.
Heck Tate’s page reported information (including actual
images and newspaper clippings) about the Scottsboro
Nine, an event that likely precipitated the major event in
To Kill a Mockingbird.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

16. Multi-genre Writing & Writing to an Audience
 By posting “status updates” as they read the novel, students
engaged in multi-genre writing.
Examples:
 Heck Tate spoke officially as the town’s sheriff about the need to respect
and uphold the law but later editorialized about ‘legal’ injustices.
 Tom Robinson pleaded to the people of Maycomb for justice—“being good
Christian folk you’ve gotta know this ain’t right”—and he journaled about
his anger over being falsely accused.
 Mr. Ewell defended his daughter’s character while also posting information
meant to “rile up” white citizens to take action on their own (a timely post
immediately preceding the late night courthouse showdown between
Atticus and a lynch mob).
 Calpurnia maternally and forcefully told Scout how to behave, e.g., “don’t
you go spreading all sorts of rumors” yet wrote very deferentially and
passively in her dialogues with Atticus, Maude Atkinson, and Aunt
Alexandra.
 The minor character Dolphus, a man who feigned being a drunkard,
posted to the general community using slurred words and confusing logic;
when addressing Scout and Jem more directly, however, his words were
clear (sober) and thoughtful: “To live the life I want, it’s best to let them
[the townspeople] judge me. Otherwise, they’d try to control me.”
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

17. Discourse and Code Switching
 Students had to represent their character via culturally and historically
appropriate discourse. This meant that students had to think about and engage
in code switching. In this case, they used southernisms and idioms, dialect and
slang. Playing southerner characters, most students made extensive use of
“ain’t.”
 Students altered their discourse to account for subcultures within the south.
Those playing poorer characters (such as the Ewells) used incorrect verb tenses
and southernisms such as “fixin’ to” and “might should” while the Black
characters (namely Tom Robinson) used a smattering of Black Vernacular: “I be
mighty scared o’ dese folk and what’n they might do.” Those playing children
(Scout, Jem, and Dill) incorporated the language common among southern
children; their posts frequently began with “Me and…” and they often used
“yeah” instead of “yes.”
 Students found and used southern idioms to express their characters’
respective views. Dill, for example, noted that Mrs. Dubose was “madder than a
wet hen” after her roses were trampled and Heck Tate said about Tom’s trial
that “I ain’t got a dog in that fight.” Interestingly, not only did students code
switch into the discourse of their characters, those characters also engaged in
code switching. Scout and Jem, for instance, changed their discursive register
(their “code”) when addressing Atticus, always answering him with the formal
“yes” and “sir” rather than “yeah.” In short, because students using this
medium had to plays role that simultaneously influenced and were influenced
by other “players,” they had to alter their language to, as one student said, “be
the character.” As Figure 3 represents, they adapted their langauge both for
their characters and to suit the particular context; they had to communicate to
and across cultures in this social realm.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

18. Nuance and Socially Constructed Meaning
 One of the most notable findings from this study was that students—
because they engaged socially and were responsible for representing
their characters as accurately as possible, found their views of the
text, the characters, and the situation, changing per the input of
others.
 Most notable in this regard were students’ feelings toward Mayella
Ewell, the woman who falsely accused Tom Robinson of rape.
 Mayella’s character posted images that showed her conflicted over the trial
(a woman pulled in two directions by unseen forces)
 Some students commented upon their belief that Mayella was “trapped” in
a bad situation
 Other students felt that Mayella had been abused or even raped by her
father
 Though Mayella was not seen by anyone as a good person, students
gained a different—and deeper—understanding of the motives and
forces that drove her character. Said one student at the end of the
study: “I hated her [Mayella] at first and can’t say I much like her
now…but [student _______ ] did her different (sic) than I would
have. I kind of saw into what motivated her, what made her who she
was.”
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

19. A Unique and Engaging Way to
Analyze a Text
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

20. CHARACTER JOURNALING
THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA:
Steps and Considerations for
Educators
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

21. Setting the Page: Preparation
Know your options (including district policies regarding social media)
Choose appropriate social media for your purposes
- Though popular and thus having currency with adolescents, Facebook
and Twitter come with concerns teachers would want to address:
1) It is hard to guarantee privacy (and thus safety) via widely used
social media so teachers must create and enforce very specific
security settings, including getting students’ login and password for
characters’ pages
2) Creation of character pages may be an infraction of that media’s
policies
3) Facebook and Twitter posts “go live” instantly, severely restricting a
teacher’s ability to determine the appropriateness of any given
character post.
Consider “school friendly” social media.
- Edmodo and other ‘school friendly’ sites come with additional security
measures—such as allowing teachers to preview students’ posts prior to
them going live—and are visible only to people given access by the
teacher
- Parents and administrators may have fewer objections to use of school
friendly social media
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

22. Setting the Page: Expectations for Students
Create and populate a social media page for your
character
- Use multimedia! Find and use appropriate images for a
profile picture, for hobbies, interests, etc. and supplement
page with other media (found art, photographs, quotes,
etc.)
- Use textual clues to show the character’s relationship to
other characters and to show her/his “likes”
- Using reasonable inferences from the text, research into
the historical contexts of the novel, and your own
creativity, supplement character page with your
character’s favorite things such as hobbies, music, movies,
beliefs, etc.
- Use the instructor’s character page as a model (see next
slide)
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

23. Setting the Page: Demonstrate
Teacher/Instructor Expectations via a Model Page
Atticus Finch’s
Facebook Page
This page was created by
the instructor to serve
multiple purposes:
a) serve as a model for
student-created
character pages;
b) serve as the central
page through which
the social community
was formed;
c) provide unobtrusive
access to the forum
(participant
observation).
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

24. Setting the Page: Playing the Part
Be your character!
- Speak for and through your character; stay in
character when discussing text (using language that
character would be likely to use)
- Interact with other characters as your character
would
- Change your character page to reflect the changes
he/she experiences in the novel and/or in reaction to
other characters’ feedback
When speaking not as a character but as yourself,
differentiate your writing/voice from that of your
character (using all capital letters)
1) students need to have a way to speak for themselves rather than as a a character
2) some characters may not appear throughout the novel but those students should
still have a way of participating in the dialogue
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

25. Assuming Roles and Becoming
Characters
Role/Character Actor
Atticus Finch Instructor
Scout Finch Student (volunteer)
Jem Finch Student (volunteer)
Calpurnia Student (volunteer)
Tom Robinson Student (volunteer)
Dill Harris Student (volunteer)
Mayella Ewell Student (volunteer)
Heck Tate Student (assigned)
Boo Radley Student (assigned)
Mrs. Dubose Student (assigned)
Aunt Alexandra Student (assigned)
Dolphus Raymond Student (assigned)
Other lesser characters Student (assigned)
Students either volunteered
for or were assigned roles
Students already familiar with
the text tended to volunteer
for major roles while
newcomers to the text were
assigned lesser roles.
The process of assigning roles
created natural book
discussion leaders—it
differentiated responsibilities
and scaffolded reading
The author assumed the role
of Atticus Finch throughout
the project.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

26. Other Considerations
 Choose a text and a social media site amenable to this approach (including
“school friendly” social media). Note that in subsequent classes students and
I found success in using this forum to examine historical fiction (The Book
Thief), futuristic adolescent fiction (The Hunger Games), and nonfiction
graphic texts (Maus and Persepolis respectively).
 Give administrators, parents, and students a well-developed and clear
rationale for using social media in this manner, explain the safeguards you
have in place, and allow parental/administrative access to the site(s) upon
demand.
 Carefully weigh your expectations and rules for the project and clearly
explain these to students.
 e a participant/character: playing a character allows teachers an authentic
and unobtrusive means of assessment and a way to pose questions, prompt
discussions, and provide additional information or context.
 For students who may not have access to social media at home or via a smart
phone, provide time in class to post for their characters.
 Provide an alternative but nonetheless interactive assignment for students
who may (or whose parents may) object to use of social media.
 Be amenable to change and create new rules as necessary. Adapt with the
contexts of your classroom and clearly explain any changes to students.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

27. Footnotes
1. Pew Research Center, 2012
2. socialmediatoday.com
3. Ledbetter et al., 2010
4. Bull et al., 2008
5. Ito et al., 2008; Palfrey and Gasser, 2008; Prensky, 2010
6. See for example: http://www.cps.edu/pages/socialmediatoolkit.aspx
7. Cramer and Hayes, 2010
8. Bhat, 2008; Blazer, 2012; Fouts, 2012
9. Lave and Wenger, 1991
10. Gee, 1998, 2000; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Street, 1995
11. Lankshear and Knobel, 2003; Mills, 2010; Moje, 2009, New London Group, 1996,
2000
12. Hymes, 1974
13. Gutiérrez, 2008; New London Group, 1996
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

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Mills, K. (2010). A review of the “digital turn” in the new literacy studies. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 246-271.
Moje, E. (2009). A call for new research on new and multiliteracies. Research in the Teaching of English, 43(4), 348–362.
New London Group, (2000). A pedagogy of multiliteracies designing social futures. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies:
Literacy learning and the design of social futures. New York: Routledge, pp. 9-38.
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Pew Research Center, (2012). Social Networking Popular Across Globe. Washington, DC: Author.
Street, B. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography and education. London: Longman.
Sweeny, S. (2010). Writing for the instant messaging and text messaging generation: using new literacies to support writing instruction.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(2), 121-130.
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

29. For more information on this study or
the journal articles resulting from it:
Contact John W. White
Foundations and Secondary Education
College of Education and Human Services
1 UNF Drive
Jacksonville, FL 32224
See also:
White, J.W., & Hungerford-Kresser, H. (2014). Character journaling through social networks:
Exemplifying tenets of the New Literacy Studies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy,
57(8), 642-654.
Full Article available at: http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3
© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida