Civic dimensions of critical digital literacies: towards an abolitionist lens

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the role of digital and civic literacies in the context of resurgent right-wing ethno-nationalism and movements for the abolition of oppressive institutions worldwide. We discuss how, while digital tools have opened up lines of democratized communication and action, civic life online and offline has become both more authoritarian and more polarized. As software platforms like Facebook and Twitter now dominate everyday civic and economic life, media and civic literacy frameworks fail to address this new reality. After overviewing a framework for literacies in current digital and civic contexts, we draw on critical race science and technology studies in order to contest notions of a universal digital or civic subject, and to argue for moving beyond normative progress discourses. Instead, we offer an abolitionist imagination, arguing that classroom approaches to critical digital literacies must draw on abolitionist praxis in order to challenge ways interlocking forms of oppression affect contemporary civic life, both online and offline.