Making Sense of Democratic Institutions Intertextually: Communication on Social Media as a Civic Literacy Event Preceding Collective Action

摘要

Communication on social media preceding coordinated street demonstrations is assayed for evidence of practice-based informal civic learning about conventional politics and mainstream media. This is done to offset a mounting interest in activist self-organization and self-reflexivity with a scrutiny of networked communication as a civic literacy event. The article proposes that skepticism and criticality directed at media and political institutions provide fertile justification for their challenge, thereby rendering intertextual informal learning an expedient to collective action.