ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the heightened social justice movement around racial tensions, police brutality, and civil unrest in 2020 and 2021 to highlight teens’ activism, allyship, and other action-oriented practices in online spaces, particularly social media platforms. These spaces became a sounding board for 21st-century socially conscious dialogue where teens, particularly Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) teens, enacted digital literacy practices such as utilizing memes and other social media literacies in critically meaningful ways, and took on identities as social justice activists. Further, in this chapter, the author analyzes how teens shared memes that were representative of their stances as activists and discusses how socially conscious and justice-oriented memes aided teens in their activism, allyship, and advocacy work. Finally, the author also explores the social justice efforts of BIPOC teens to provide insight into their lived experiences and presents ways in which English teachers can incorporate critical memetic literacies grounded in the identities of their students. For example, the author provides activities and resources for cultural and linguistic considerations drawing from cultural-infused perspectives and frameworks, and an original concept, Culturally Digitized Pedagogy, to reimagine teaching and learning toward cultivating opportunities to uplift the practices, voices, and ways of knowing and doing literacy of BIPOC teens.
