| Social media has created a new generation of activism. Taking the lead from political activists who have been using social media as a means of protest and resistance across the globe, education activists increasingly rely on new literacy practices such as blogs, memes, Twitter, YouTube videos, and Facebook groups as a means to organize and mobilize. Just as Facebook and Twitter were instrumental in the Arab Spring Protests and Occupy Wall Street Movements in 2011, education activists now utilize social media tools and platforms to protest and resist policies driven by corporate led education reform. Focusing on social media based education activism in the United States, this study sought to determine how three digitally enabled education activist groups function as communities of practice and to consider their strengths and pitfalls. Within these groups, social media has served to function as a space for educating members, for sharing narratives, and for organizing for offline actions of protest and resistance. At the same time, these groups can be prone to disorders that can impact their effectiveness, such as self-interest, lack of shared identity, and an expectation of uniform thinking by members of a group, sometimes leading to internal strife.;Analyzing multimodal discourse in these online groups through screenshots of Facebook conversation threads provides a window into how such tools as memes and memetic videos are used as framing devices and as a means of political participation. This study suggests implications for the utilization of social media for education activists and researchers, including an understanding of how social media tools are used to frame positions and the need for awareness of potential pitfalls. |
