Abstract:

This interdisciplinary, feminist-informed research explores racialized tween and teen girls’ video-based storytelling and considers how extracurricular programs can support their media-making. It centres around the experiences of four ethnoracially-diverse and marginalized girl-identifying youth who participated in a virtual digital storytelling program I designed and facilitated in Spring 2021 of the pandemic in Toronto, Canada.

My inquiry was underpinned by feminist theory, public pedagogy, and feminist media. In particular, I drew from youth media cultures and media education scholarship, aligning with research about community-based youth documentary media-making initiatives and girls' media cultures. It addresses the limited research into the experiences of marginalized girls as well as girls who make media. Utilizing a qualitative case study design, I designed a brief curriculum that considered tenets of anti-racist (Baker-Bell, 2020; Chavez, 2021) and culturally responsive pedagogies (El Ashmawi et al., 2018; Hammond, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 1995).

This research honours participants’ stories and describes the wide-ranging nature of their video-storytelling experiences and approaches through personas I crafted for them. It further discusses the participants' video-making in relation to postfeminist-influenced and video-based social media ecologies and girls’ informal, self-directed media education. This supports my initial recommendations for girl-centered programs that emphasize community, support skills development, and provide safer spaces for their media-making and learning. Through this work, I advocate for girl-specific media-making communities of practice—particularly for marginalized girls—as necessary interventions in evolving media industries and culture to more fully include, support, reflect, and represent diverse populations of girls and women and their stories.

Keywords:

Girls media, digital storytelling, racialized girls, extracurricular video-storytelling programs, feminist media.