Democratizing now! Latiné youth and social media

​Blog post by Rebecca Callahan, University of Vermont, USA; Julieta Rico, University of California at Los Angeles, USA; Kathryn M. Obenchain, Purdue University, USA; Claudia Ochoa, University of Texas-Austin, USA; and Angeles De Santos-Quezada, University of Texas-Austin, USA
 
Polarizing and hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric dominates political news in the US, a nation uniquely defined by both its immigrant origins and its racist, white settler colonial history. In the politically charged months leading up to the 2020 election, we interviewed dozens of Latiné young adult US citizens about their sense of belonging and responsibility to their community. As we explore in our Identities article, ‘Civic identity: media, belonging, and Latiné youth in the 2020 US presidential election’, these data revealed surprising findings; (1) our participants used social media to identify a community of belonging beyond their geographic locale; (2) as informed citizens, they curated, vetted and disseminated information to protect and improve the community; and (3) they perceived media misinformation as a serious threat to democracy. 
 
Not only did participants report using social media to identify a community of belonging defined by shared experiences, beliefs or ethnicity, but they did so at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic limited traditional ways that people gathered and engaged in civic life. Social media allowed participants to connect not only with family and friends, but also with a large coethnic community that expanded beyond their physical location to include people they already knew as well as those they admired (e.g., celebrities and political figures). 

Participants reported wanting and needing to protect their community members, and doing so by sharing and creating content. Social media’s ‘boundless’ nature meant community could easily extend beyond geographic boundaries, defined instead by shared interests, beliefs and/or coethnicity. As one participant, Leticia, reported, “I found out about [the state National Guard enforcing a curfew] … by other people on social media… just watching out for each other… this is a way of helping each other out, even if we're not best friends. There are a lot of ways that we look out for each other”. Protecting their communities, participants publicly presented civic identities, acting as informed citizens, verifying that the media they consumed and shared was safe and accurate.
 
Our participants consumed media they deemed trustworthy and safe to share; protecting one’s community means not only correcting misinformation but also disseminating accurate information, helpful resources and warnings of potential dangers. Interviewed during an era dominated by fake news and misinformation, our participants described feeling constant pressure to defend their lived experiences as factual counternarratives, relating how they vetted, verified and translated information to disperse to their communities. These efforts underscored their concern about the threat media misinformation poses to our democracy.
 
Participants expressed a distrust of traditional media, voicing criticism of fake news, politicians and unvetted, unchallenged social media claims and highlighting how it spread misinformation that created and perpetuated division in an already polarized society. The media’s negative portrayal of immigrants and Latinés fuelled our participants’ desire to protect and inform their communities –which they accomplished using social media. They shared verified information from trusted sources and created their own posts to connect their community with much-needed resources; they moved beyond being media consumers to become media producers, our participants expanded their civic identities to become civic agents, acting as informed citizens to bring about positive change for their communities.
 
During the 2020 election, the ongoing pandemic limited face-to-face activities, requiring different forms of civic engagement. Already using social media in their everyday lives, these young adults employed it as a tool of civic engagement to protect their communities. The pandemic, combined with the Black Lives Matter movement spurred them to civic action. Social media offered a space to engage with and inform others. In the quote above, Leticia clearly saw herself as an individual responsible to, and protective of, her community of belonging. Social media offered a space in which to dispel misinformation, redefine community and belonging, and become informed citizens to protect and strengthen their communities. 

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Image credit: Angeles DeSantos-Quezada

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​Read the Identities article:
Callahan, Rebecca M., Rico, Julieta, Obenchain, Kathryn M., Ochoa, Claudia & DeSantos-Quezada, Angeles. (2024). Civic identity: media, belonging, and Latiné youth in the 2020 US presidential election. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2024.2367895

Read further in Identities:

U.S. multiculturalism and the concept of culture

Emirati expats in social media: a new arena for involvement and political expression?   OPEN ACCESS

​Music and political identity salience in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election