Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Twitter, cyber-violence, and the need for a critical social media literacy
in teacher education: A review of the literature
Joelle Nagle
Western University, 1137 Western Road, N6G 1G7, London, Ontario, Canada

h i g h l i g h t s

Literature is reviewed on teachers engaging in new participatory social media practices.

Twitter affords many benefits for teachers through professional learning networks.

Twitter is rife with cyber-violence for women and other marginalized communities.

A critical social media literacy is needed within teacher education.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Multiliteracies and new literacies pedagogies advocate for expanded ideas of literacy, which focus heavily
Received 1 October 2017 on the use of digital technologies within the classroom. Yet there is little discussion within the discipline
Received in revised form regarding the ethical implications of using social media in teacher education. This is of particular concern
10 August 2018
given the potential for online spaces to be unsafe. In particular, the social media site Twitter, used and
Accepted 28 August 2018
promoted by many educators to collaborate within professional learning networks, is rife with misogyny
and racial violence. Through a review of the current literature on social media use in teacher education,
and a multi-disciplinary perspective on issues of cyber-violence, I will discuss the ethical implications for
Keywords:
Cyber-violence
teacher educators who want to use Twitter as a pedagogical tool and offer strategies to develop critical
Social media social media literacy practices.
Multiliteracies © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
New literacies
Teacher education
Misogyny
Racial violence

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2. Affordances of social media in teacher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3. Using Twitter in teacher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4. Cyber-violence and social media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5. Ethical considerations for teacher educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6. Developing a critical social media literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.1. Examining and evaluating social media as a tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.2. Examining participation: Issues of access and power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.3. Participatory technologies as a choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.4. Ways to respond: Witnessing and experiencing cyber-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.5. Guidance and scaffolding with social media tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
7. Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
8. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

E-mail address: jnagle3@uwo.ca.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.08.014
0742-051X/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 J. Nagle / Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94 87

Supplementary data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

1. Introduction participatory technologies into practice can be a way to reach a new

generation of students and for new teachers to be “fully engaged in
Participatory technologies have expanded the boundaries of our new literacies practices” (Knobel & Lankshear, 2014, p. 100). By
communities by bridging the local with the global. However, having in-service and preservice teachers use digital technologies
involvement in these online communities are not without risk. for their own educative purposes, they are better equipped to foster
Many diverse peoples, specifically women, and especially women these skills in their students (Benko, Guise, Earl, & Gill, 2016;
of colour, experience violence online. Within social media tech- Collier, Foley, Moguel, & Barnard, 2013; Knobel & Lankshear, 2014).
nologies, such as Twitter and Facebook, cyber-violence has become Thus, preservice teachers need to become engaged within these
pervasive. The feminist blogger, Heuchan (2017), poignantly stated: new literacies (Collier et al., 2013) if they are to understand the
affordances of digital technologies and the diverse literacies used
Of course, with visibility comes abuse. That is the case for all
by their students. Husbye and Elsener (2013) agreed but argued
women, and double true for black women. Along with the
that incorporating digital tools into practice, such as mobile tech-
misogyny, there is a persistent racism that shapes both the
nologies, is a challenge. As such, Greenhow and Gleason (2012) saw
content and frequency of our abuse online. There is no way to
the use of social media, such as Twitter, as a way for new teachers to
deal with the racial slurs, the graphic racist images, the violent
reconcile the bridge between “new and old literacies” (p. 474) by
threatsdat least, none that I have found. It's scary. It hurts. It
learning how to engage fully in the style of Twitterdthe micro-
stays with you after you turn off your phone, close your laptop.”
blogging, social media platform, with its limit of 280 characters
(p. 21e22).
available for one tweetdas a new literacy practice.

Thus, if teacher educators are to increasingly promote the use of

3. Using Twitter in teacher education
digital social media technologies with preservice teachers, they
must engage in critical conversations about the technology. This is
Scholars are now documenting the use of social media tech-
to bring awareness to the diversity of experiences of those who
nologies, specifically Twitter, in teacher education (Benko et al.,
participate online. Using social media as a pedagogical tool holds
2016; Carpenter & Krutka, 2014, 2015; Carpenter, 2015;
benefits for engaging collaboratively with others in a global space.
Carpenter, Tur, & Marin, 2016; Collier et al., 2013; Cook &
However, teacher educators need to consider their ethical re-
Bissonnette, 2016; Husbye & Elsener, 2013; Krutka, Nowell, &
sponsibility to their students if they are aware these spaces have
Whitlock, 2017; Luo, Sickel, & Cheng, 2016; Preston, Jakubiec,
the potential to be unsafe.
Jones, & Earl, 2015). This research illustrates how social media
In this article, I will review the current research on social media
may be used as a necessary practice for preservice teachers who
use in teacher education, specifically Twitter, and I will highlight its
“must be equipped to draw upon a variety of literacies to tap into
affordances for teacher professional learning. Further, I will provide
the complex social worlds of their future pupils” (Collier et al., 2013,
an exploration of cyber-violence and the ramifications for students
p. 263). Twitter, especially, holds many affordances for teachers
who may be exposed to misogyny and hate online. Lastly, I will
looking to engage in participatory online communities of practice
discuss the ethical implications of teacher educators who use social
(Benko et al., 2016; Kimmons & Veletsianos, 2015).
media as a pedagogical tool in teacher education, and I will offer
Holmes, Preston, Shaw, and Buchanan (2013), who studied the
strategies to develop a critical approach to social media literacy.
tweets of 30 top educational Twitter accounts followed by educa-
tors, found that this space allowed teachers to filter resources,
2. Affordances of social media in teacher education collaborate with like-minded individuals, and aid in teachers gath-
ering in “online communities of learning” (p. 63). Their research
Multiliteracies pedagogy (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kalantzis & indicated that preservice teachers could use Twitter as a reflective
Cope, 2012; New London Group, 1996) and new literacies practice tool, which can provide connections between new and
(Lankshear & Knobel, 2011) advocate for the expansion of literacy experienced teachers, and engage in online professional learning
education to include digital technologies. These digital compe- networks (PLNs) that extend beyond teacher education. Carpenter
tencies include being adept at using a variety of technological tools, and Krutka (2015), similar to the findings by Holmes et al. (2013),
such as the Internet, for the multimodality, global connectivity, and found that for resource sharing, teachers valued Twitter as a means
the collaboration it affords. Teacher educators are called upon to of filtering or vetting web content. Many educators felt this space
design learning environments that reflect the global and local peer- filtered the negative teacher-talk they experienced within their own
to-peer collaborative and participatory technologies students working environments, and that Twitter was a place for like-
interact within, such as social media spaces. This call to action is minded educators to gather with others who were identified as
with the aim of using digital technologies with a new generation of “generous, forward-thinking and energetic” in an environment that
teachers, so that “teacher education can play a role in transforming was “positive and optimistic” (p. 719).
school practice” (Cervetti, Damico, & Pearson, 2006, p. 378). In their study of over 700 teachers from the United States, the
Kalantzis and Cope (2010) spoke about this new participatory United Kingdom, and Australia, Carpenter and Krutka (2015)
generation in which students are literate in a multitude of digital, discovered that teachers used Twitter for their own professional
online, and connected technologies; a generation that extends development (PD) outside state or district-mandated PD. Within
student learning out-of-school, where they are “using the social this space, teachers sought out professional learning networks that
media to learn anywhere and everywhereea phenomenon called fit their needs as professionals, and Twitter was a specific venue
‘ubiquitous learning’” (p. 204). For teacher educators, incorporating that offered bite-sized and manageable professional development
88 J. Nagle / Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94
opportunities. Ninety-six percent of those surveyed used Twitter
for the sharing and acquiring of resources, 86% for collaboration,
and 79% for networking globally with other teachers. The authors
argued that for teachers who were dissatisfied with their district's
PD, Twitter had the potential “to offer an efficient and personalized
alternative means of professional learning” (p. 723). Carpenter et al.
(2016) found similar data in their comparative study with 153
teacher candidates from across the United States and Spain and
discovered that, for preservice teachers, Twitter had the potential
to enhance their professional learning experiences. In this way, new
teachers can begin to establish their professional networks before
they enter the profession. Visser, Evering, and Barrett (2014) found
comparable results in their survey research, conducted with over
300 teachers, where participants felt their Twitter PD was “trans-
formative in nature, resulting in improved classroom practice,”
where they “learn[ed] about the latest research, pedagogical stra-
tegies, and best practices; discovered Web-based resources, lesson
plans, and innovative ideas about literacy instruction” (p. 407).
Teachers also felt that Twitter aided in their use of technology.
Through the online collaboration and sharing of resources,
Carpenter and Krutka (2015) identified that teachers felt their
practice improved and their use of technology in their classroom
practice increased. Teachers claimed this online venue increased
their knowledge of technology, but further, increased their use of
technology. These findings are significant if, indeed, Twitter pro-
vides teachers with the opportunity for transformed practice
through their online professional learning.
However, not all encounters with Twitter as a professional or
pedagogical tool are conducive to positive educational experiences.
Carpenter et al. (2016) highlighted that preservice teachers needed
assistance to “leverage the learning affordances and mitigate the
possible challenges of social media such as Twitter” (p. 139). This
finding applied to both using the site as a tool for collaboration
within PLNs and in bridging this use into their classroom practices.
Correspondingly, Krutka et al. (2017) also reported that preservice
students needed assistance to use social media as a learning tool:
“Defying the digital native myth that you intuitively know how to
use technologies” (p. 225). Their findings suggest that students
need to be more sufficiently prepared for how to use Twitter in
their teaching practices. As Rheingold (2008) noted, though stu-
dents have grown up with digital technology, they might be limited
in any expanded uses as they are both “self-guided and in need of
guidance” (p. 25).
In their participatory action research study, Preston et al. (2015)
noted the importance of overtly teaching technology to preservice
teachers, specifically with their use of Twitter. Findings suggest that
though new teachers became more positive after engaging in their
Twitter assignments, at first they felt “doubtful and hesitant” (p.
306) to use this technology for educational purposes. Carpenter,
Cook, Morrison, and Sams (2017) also recommended guidance for
new teachers to help them understand the goals of using Twitter to
develop PLNs. In addition, they suggested bringing students' out-
of-school experiences with the social media into the classroom
where they had opportunities to “share, reflect, and write” (p. 58)
about those experiences. Findings from these studies suggest
Twitter is an important professional learning tool for teachers and
holds positive affordances for new teachers within teacher educa-
tion, but preservice teachers need guidance in framing their use of
social media in pedagogical ways.
Beyond the beneficial uses of Twitter in preservice education
and its importance in affording teachers opportunities to experi-
ences new literacies to establish professional networks, the data
reveal a lack of representation in participation online. Carpenter
et al. (2016) acknowledged their study lacked the opportunity for
more racial diversity and cultural representation. However, in the
literature on Twitter use in teacher education, Visser et al. (2014)
were the only researchers who collected demographic data. Inter-
estingly, they found 91% of the teachers surveyed were White,
while only 2% were African-American, and 2% were Asian-
American. In summary, the existing literature suggests that
research on Twitter use in teacher education is only being con-
ducted on a narrow demographic of teachers. To understand how
different groups of people are engaging and navigating within so-
cial media spaces, we must understand a diversity of online users
and their experiences. Moreover, if some teachers are not using
these spaces, why not?
Understanding how teacher educators and preservice teachers
use Twitter as a tool for learning is necessary. However, as the
research above suggests, the Twitter environment centers around
like-minded professionals in spaces of commercially contrived
conviviality (Friesen & Lowe, 2012) or friendliness. Friesen and
Lowe argued these spaces, in and of themselves, lack the ability to
be genuinely educational, even as a professional learning envi-
ronment, because social media is a commercial enterprise working
within a business model of conviviality. In this model, the user and
the medium work within a symbiotic relationship where the con-
tent offered shapes use, and in turn the user shapes content,
because “advertisers' interests subtly but effectively shape online
social contexts … content, including non-commercial content, is
shaped by commercial interests” (p. 190). Research also suggests
educators who are entering these spaces may alter their identities
as professionals who become apolitical (Kimmons & Veletsianos,
2015; Kimmons, 2014). Friesen and Lowe (2012) argued becoming
apolitical limited the space to be used for educational purposes and
stated that “the intentional social community has an inherent block
to educationenot disagreeing” (p. 191). Thus, if one cannot engage
in constructive critical debate with people who hold a variety of
differing perspectives, it defeats the purpose of education alto-
gether. Carpenter and Krutka (2015) aptly acknowledged their
concern that Twitter promoted “homophily” (p. 722): the tendency
to gather in like-minded groups. These findings may signify why
many educators report such positive experiences while using
Twitter for educational purposes: It becomes a homogeneous
space. Therefore, it is crucial to explore how diverse groups of users
in education engage within this cyberspace, as not all user expe-
riences are described as convivial.
From a Canadian perspective, provincial curricula and ministry
initiatives in K-12 education (i.e., Ontario Ministry of Education,
2015a, 2015b) outline how educators can address the negative
pitfalls of using the Internet through protection of personal privacy
and ways to address cyberbullying. In post-secondary institutions,
digital communication is included in their Codes of Conduct for
students, but their policies lack critical strategies to address the
harm from exposure to online content created by other users. This
issue of harm moves beyond personal responsibility of use by both
teachers and students, respectively. While students may be
responsible for their own content produced online, it is the expo-
sure to others' content that becomes problematic. For example,
Twitter is known to be rife with misogynistic and racial violence,
especially for women (particularly Black women), Black Indigenous
and People of Colour (BIPOC), and people within LGBTQ commu-
nities (Awan, 2014; Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016; Eckert, 2017, pp.
1e21; Jane, 2014; Jane, 2016; Oksanen, Hawdon, Holkeri, Na €si, &
Ra€ s€
anen, 2014; Webb et al., 2015; Whittaker & Kowalski, 2015).
Therefore, what are the implications of using social media in
educational spaces when we know that our students may be
exposed to violent content?
The findings from the studies above are significant if the goal of
multiliteracies and new literacies is to incorporate participatory
technologies into teacher practice. The research highlights the
 J. Nagle / Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94
affordances of social media tools like Twitter are conducive to
personalized and productive professional development and
learning. However, there is also an assumption that new teachers
implicitly know how to navigate through social media, with an
ability to leverage its affordances within their teaching practices.
Moreover, in the current literature, with its focus on a White de-
mographic, the experiences of BIPOC and people within LGBTQ
communities are excluded and under-researched.
4. Cyber-violence and social media
In light of new social media technologies, Kellner and Share
(2007) proposed a critical media literacy (CML), in which its criti-
cality sought to transform education to uncover more profound
issues of power and oppression, including “white supremacy,
capitalist patriarchy, classism, homophobia, and other oppressive
myths” (p. 62). In their multiperspectival approach, CML attended to
emergent technologies and called for a focus on how to teach new
media through a critical lens in areas of global communication,
popular culture, and technology (Kellner & Share, 2007). Rheingold
(2010) also realized that understanding social media as a new lit-
eracy was becoming a necessity. In his work, he categorized social
media literacies as: Attentionddiscerning where our attention lies
when engaged with social media, which experiences need priority;
Participationddiscerning when, why, and how we post online, as
well as understanding the global implications of our online
participation; Collaborationddiscerning our role within participa-
tory spaces, being a part of online communities; Network Awar-
enessdbeing knowledgeable of the tool itself; and Critical
Consumptiondhaving a good dose of “crap detection” (p. 22) in the
face of the overwhelming access to information. Though Rhein-
gold's work established a much-needed framework to understand
social media literacy, his categories fail to address or confront
dominant ideologies within cyberspaces that lead to inequity,
misogyny, or racially motivated cyber-violence.
Within critical media literacy and social media literacies
discourse there are no clear conversations regarding the experi-
encing of, or exposure to, cyber-violence. Such discussions are
happening within other disciplines, such as human computer
interaction (i.e., Brahnam, Karanikas, & Weaver, 2011; Bardzell,
2010), cyberfeminism (i.e., Jane, 2014, 2016), feminist media
studies, (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016), and criminology (i.e.,
Lewis, Rowe, & Wiper, 2016), but they are lacking in teacher edu-
cation. These critical conversations, which deal with gendered
cyber-violence, are especially warranted in education given the
focus around participatory technologies.
Luce-Kapler, Sumara, and Iftody (2010) broached the need for an
ethical approach to online experiences. Their discussion focused on
how new literacy spaces forced us to be digitally literate to identify
and empathize in ethical ways, with the people we encounter on-
line, because:
In a media-saturated world where real people's narratives are
presented in fictional structures, in what we are calling ‘new
literacy spaces,’ readers are responding to those narratives using
literacy practices without necessarily considering that these are
not fictional characters but real people, a situation that demands
a different kind of ethic. (p. 538).
As their starting point, the authors used an example of cyber-
bullying and called for a new “ethical know-how” (p. 539), one
based on an empathetic understanding of real material human
beings who inhabit spaces within online communities. In these
spaces, abuse can affect people in real material ways. This reality
connected to one preservice student's inquiry in the study by
89
Preston et al. (2015) when she asked: “What if [students] tweet
inappropriate things? What would happen to the feelings of the
students in the rest of the class?” (p. 310). This questioning, of what
happens to others in the class exposed to inappropriate tweets, is
significant. Educators need to consider all facets of interaction on-
line, and the implications to those witnessing inappropriate
content.
Vasudevan (2010), in her discussion of “digitally mediated
spaces” (p. 48), suggested that we move away from the fear of social
spaces online and embrace the new literacies youth are engaged
within. However, her vision upholds one that views the Internet as
“a space where one can be or become anyone” (Brophy, 2010, p.
930). This vision of the affordances of new literacies is what Brophy,
a feminist scholar, considered a cyberutopia, which “relies primarily
on the principle of disembodiment,” where its “associated sex,
gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, (dis)ability, and so
onefrees the user to be judged on their online presence, which they
are able to carefully construct” (p. 930). The danger Brophy saw
here, and one that multiliteracies and new literacies scholarship do
not acknowledge, is that if we embrace disembodiment and leave
our subjectivities behind, people online “are assumed whiteeand
are often assumed male, middle-class, technologically savvy, and
on US-based sites, Christian.” (p. 932). The danger posed is that
those who dominate these spaces are oblivious to the experiences
of those unmasked by these assumptions.
Literacy scholars are beginning to conceptualize new literacies
in embodied ways. For example, Ehret and Hollett (2014) and their
studies on embodied digital composition; Burnett, Merchant, Pahl,
and Rowsell (2014) who argued that “meaning-making is
embodied,” one where “modal choice calls up feeling, emotion and
a felt connection with modes” (p. 97); and Wohlwend and Lewis
(2011), with their theory of critical literacies, which included
embodiment as “the immersion of bodies and emotions in digital
spaces as well as the ways in which bodies and emotions are rep-
resented in and shaped by digital spaces” (p. 190). In cyberfemin-
ism, Brophy (2010) considered embodiment in digital spaces and
warned that “psychological harm is also physical and social harm,
embodied and ‘real’” (p. 770). By not acknowledging the material
body as we move online and offline is to limit our understanding of
how people are living and fully experiencing life within these
spaces. If we are to conceptualize the relationships between tech-
nologies and embodiment, then we need to understand the full
effects of this relationshipdthat if we enter these cyberspaces in
material ways, the harm encountered there is significant and affects
real bodies in and out of those spaces.
Cyberfeminist and media research, which focuses mainly on
how women experience cyberspaces like Twitter, understand these
spaces are rife with misogyny and violence. Cyber-violence, ac-
cording to Hanewald (2008), included “hate speech, threats,
stalking, harassment, sexual remarks, vulgar language and cyber
bullying” (p. 2). Whereas, Jane (2014) classified the term more
specifically as e-bile to describe online vitriol as language “heavily
laced with expletives, profanity and explicit imagery of sexual
violence” (p. 558), and “gendered e-bile frequently spikes in
response to feminist activism and perceived feminist gains” (p.
563). Jane's “unexpurgated” (p. 559) accounts of her own experi-
ences with cyber-violence are raw, and at times hard to read, and
for those who have experienced harassment online, “it causes
suffering and is likely reducing the inclusivity of the cyberspace” (p.
567). Banet-Weiser and Miltner (2016) referred to online cyber-
violence as a “networked misogyny” (p. 171) where “these forms
of violence are not only about gender, but are also often racist, with
women of colour as particular targets” (p. 171). Banet-Weiser and
Miltner supported Jane's assumption that along with feminist vis-
ibility online comes violence, as “the heightened visibility of
90 J. Nagle / Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94
popular feminism and its accompanying message of confidence has
been met by another popular discourse: popular misogyny” (p.
172). Lewis et al (2017) and Eckert (2017, pp. 1e21) each suggested
that feminist women who actively occupied online spaces as
venues for their activism and political critiques were at a greater
risk and therefore “restrict[ed] women's civic engagement” (Lewis
et al., 2016, p. 1464). According to Jane (2016), such experiences
lead women to self-censor and limit their interactions online,
“writing anonymously or under pseudonyms or withdrawing from
online domains altogether to avoid abuse” (p. 286).
Zembylas and Vrasidas (2005), similar to Brophy's cyberutopia,
considered the dangers of the “global-village narrative,” and argued
that “erasing cultural differences and national boundaries” (p. 66) is
a variety of colonialism. Alongside women, BIPOC and people
within LGBTQ communities are subjected to hate speech in online
spaces, sometimes for simply identifying themselves as being other,
which includes: sexual orientation, appearance, ethnicity or na-
tionality, religion, and disability (Oksanen et al., 2014). Awan
(2014), in his study on Islamophobia online, concurred and also
argued that “online abuse is not restricted to online Islamophobia,
for example, it could be online anti-Semitic abuse, homophobic
abuse, gender-based abuse and antidisability abuse” (p. 134).
Diverse groups of people and their experiences online, needs to be
examined.
Researchers have tried to understand cyber-violence by
exploring the behaviour of those who engage in and instigate
abusive behaviour. A troll, one who purposefully creates conflict on
social media sites, has the sole intention to “disrupt and annoy”
(Binns, 2012, p. 547) people online, and Maltby et al. (2016)
described trolls as “attention seeking, have low self-confidence,
are vicious, are uneducated” (p. 461). These researchers suggested
that once people understood the disruptors and saw them with
those qualities previously mentioned, those targeted may have
potential to “ameliorate the negative effect” (p. 462). In other
words, perhaps by understanding and empathizing with perpe-
trators, one could lessen the adverse psychological effects.
However, it is not just those who experience cyber-violence that
are at risk. Whittaker and Kowalski (2015) created a taxonomy of
cyberbullying to understand the types of cyber-abuse that exist.
Their categories included adolescents who cyberbullied their peers,
strangers who were unknown to the cyberbully, and cyberbullying
against specific religious or ethnic groups. They also examined
witnesses to these different types of abuse; online users witnessing
the cyberbullying of peers versus the bullying of people unknown
to them. Data revealed that adolescents who witnessed cyberbul-
lying were less likely to view the abuse of strangers as real abuse in
online social media spaces as, “people known only online were
victimized most frequently on every venue” (p. 25). This finding
refers back to Luce-Kapler et al. (2010), who suggested we need a
new kind of empathetic ethic in these new literacy spaces: We need
to recognize that the abuse we witness online is happening to real
people, not merely to fictional characters in a book.
According to the PEW Research Center (2014), two thirds (66%)
of online harassment comes from social network sites where the
perpetrators are strangers and are unknown to the victim. In the
PEW report on Online Harassment, Duggan et al. (2014, pp. 1e65)
reported that in the United States more people witness abuse on-
line than experience it as, “40% of users have personally been
harassed on the Internet, while 73% have witnessed it happen to
others” (p. 2). Of that percentage,
60% of internet users said they had witnessed someone being
called offensive names; 53% had seen efforts to purposefully
embarrass someone; 25% had seen someone being physically
threatened; 24% witnessed someone being harassed for a
sustained period of time; 19% said they witnessed someone
being sexually harassed; 18% said they had seen someone be
stalked.” (p. 2).
More importantly, White people were most likely to witness
harassment than were African-Americans or Hispanics (Duggan
et al., 2014, pp. 1e65). Further harm to witnessing online cyber-
violence was illustrated by Oksanen et al. (2014), who found that
“the long-term effects of exposure to hateful online material may
include reinforcing discrimination against vulnerable groups” (p.
258). Aguilera-Carnerero and Azeez (2016) agreed that being
exposed to “online hate speech in general is the normalization of
hate speech aimed at making the hate against the target group
appear acceptable” (p. 24). Witnessing violence can aid in
normalizing hate and discrimination, and it is important, for
example, to understand that once preservice students step outside
the safe spaces of educational professional learning networks there
is the potential for harm. As Berson, Berson, and Ferron (2002) aptly
identified, “the increased immersion of students into a digital age
has also contributed to the evolution of new participants in and
witnesses to the emergence of social problems in the cyberworld”
(p. 52). Teacher educators, therefore, need to interrogate the ethical
implications of putting students into these spacesdand explore
how to respond in critical ways to this issue with their students.
5. Ethical considerations for teacher educators
As teacher educators, we must be continually aware of our
ethical responsibilities to our students. We must also consider how
these ethical issues change the way we think of new digital spaces
as a new literacy. In an era of #MeToodthe social media campaign
bringing awareness to the sexual, sexualized, and gendered
violence online against women of colour, started by Tarana Burke
(Adetiba, 2017)dentering into digital spaces, now more than ever,
needs to be considered critically and with care. Further, the
discourse around trigger warnings (alerting students to material
that may be distressing and cause relived trauma) in higher edu-
cation warrants attention and discussion in teacher education
classrooms when we ask students to inhabit social media spaces.
Though, trigger warnings are not without controversy. Flore ^ncio
(2016) suggested that using trigger warnings may limit discus-
sions that challenge students such as “violence, gender inequality,
racial discrimination, or sexuality” (para. 7), which may keep stu-
dents from attending classes that attempt to deal with such sen-
sitive topics. On the other hand, Carter (2015) argued that these
discussions around trauma-informed education belong to “the
able-body minded among us; ” pedagogical discussions that are
privileged only for those “whose lives are not already shaped by
trauma” (para. 2). Meanwhile, Godderis and Root (2016) suggested
that teachers need to develop a “culture of informed learning” (p.
131) where they acknowledge trauma within their classrooms and
that by not doing so, the “experiences of marginalization, oppres-
sion, and injustice” (p. 133) becomes a form of censorship. While
these discussions may be difficult, we as teacher educators would
be remiss not to open ourselves and our students up to such dis-
cussions to uncover the diversity of experiences online.
Entering into these discussions, and honouring them as a
trauma-informed pedagogy, is crucial. Zembylas and Vrasidas
(2005) underscored the need for this criticality, especially with
new and emerging technologies. Teachers should not shy away
from these difficult conversations and can develop a pedagogy of
discomfort (Zembylas, 2015), one that may help students discern
their role within these social media cyberspaces. Through “collec-
tive witnessing” students can challenge the “global-village”
 J. Nagle / Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94
(Zembylas & Vrasidas, 2005, p. 66) and cyberutopia narratives,
which erase individual subjectivities, and preservice students can
begin to understand that “learning to see differently involves
recognizing that the Internet teaches people to view the world
through a ‘partisan lens’” (p. 74), as it is “an important step in
identifying exploitation, alienation, and disparities between the
haves and the have-nots” (p. 75). These conversations need to
happen within teacher education, specifically within the discipline
of multiliteracies and new literacies, where digital literacies are a
priority and frequently discussed in cyberutopian ways.
Murray, Gillese, Lennon, Mercer, and Robinson (1996) outlined
nine principles for ethics in university teaching. The following are
important ethical considerations for teachers who are using social
media tools in their practice. Relevant to the conversation within
this paper, are the following principles: Principle 3: Dealing with
sensitive topics, “the teacher acknowledges from the outset that a
particular topic is sensitive, and explains why it is necessary to
include” (p. 6) and Principle 4: Student development, “the teacher's
most basic responsibility is to design instruction that facilitates
learning and encourages autonomy and independent thinking in
students, to treat students with respect and dignity” (p. 7). For
preservice teachers to understand the experiences of their peers
and future students within online spaces, it is crucial that they be
fully aware of how these spaces can be platforms for hate speech
and misogyny.
6. Developing a critical social media literacy
Critical social media literacy is needed within teacher education
because social media spaces are not neutral. Students need stra-
tegies and tools to work within these spaces and to leverage their
affordances for professional learning. They also need to be aware of
how a diversity of people (including their peers) use and experi-
ence social media. Social media spaces cannot simply be used as
alternative venues where literacy events occur. Social media, by
design, and how it can be used to promulgate violence, needs to be
critically examined, to “expose the dominant patterns of power and
authority that remain hidden from view or become normalised
through routine of everyday activity” (Burnett & Merchant, 2011, p.
43). The following strategies for teacher educators can be used to
complement pedagogical approaches to developing a critical social
media literacy with preservice students.
6.1. Examining and evaluating social media as a tool
It is crucial to understand the digital tools we are using in
teacher education. Similar to a critical digital literacy, where
importance is placed on the examination of various digital media,
teachers and students need to learn about the social media tech-
nologies they use. A critical social media approach attempts to
understand how the technology influences our communication
literacy practices through its specific values and norms of behav-
iour (Kimmons, 2014). This approach acknowledges that Twitter is
based on a business model, where advertisers seek to attract the
attention of the user (Friesen & Lowe, 2012). Students need to
understand specific media manipulate our attention and shape our
communications in order to end up in groups of like-minded
people. However, more profoundly, we need to ask: Who is
excluded from our network based on algorithms that continually
suggest new connections between like-minded people? Our
attention, like Rheingold (2010) suggested, needs to become
focused. Educators and new teachers need to become aware of
where our attention lies, how our communication tools work, and
what indeed are the affordances and pitfalls of each type of social
media. As teacher educators, we need to ask: Is this the best tool? It
91
would be pertinent to examine critically, the values and norms of
various social media tools with preservice teachers; to frame stu-
dents' personal uses, as well as to gain an understanding of how
these uses may be altered as an educational tool.
6.2. Examining participation: Issues of access and power
Not all students have the same access or experiences within
social media. Kimmons (2014) spoke about a participation gap
where not everyone had the opportunity, knowledge, or under-
standing of how to use social media effectively. In a critical social
media, students are aware that the participation gap is widened
further when there are attempts to exclude people who are har-
assed, who witness violence online, or who self-censor and
therefore leave social media due to the harmful effects of cyber-
violence.
In a critical social media literacy, teacher educators and new
teachers need to discuss their personal experiences with social
media and confront ways in which BIPOC and people within LGBTQ
communities, might also be experiencing these spaces. Just as we
need to be aware of how younger students might be experiencing
social media in ways unknown to us, we need to be aware of how
preservice students are experiencing social media. Teacher educa-
tors can instigate in-depth discussions about who has access, who
is excluded, and why. Discussions could be initiated through critical
self-reflection (Pangrazio, 2016) by reflecting on students' own
“digital histories” and focusing on “how these are shaped by
particular digital discourses” to question “dominant ideologies” (p.
171). These reflections are with the understanding, as Cook and
Bissonnette (2016) mentioned, to bring those difficult conversa-
tions back into the classroom after students have been online.
Discussions can extend beyond curriculum content, or professional
learning networks created, and delve deeper into conversations
regarding other types of experiences students encounter when
they stray away from like-minded, convivial communities. This
commitment is to remain critical of how and in what ways the
medium is shaping their experiences and how their experiences
within it are shaping them as students and as educators. We need
to ask: How are people being positioned (both the user and others
within that space) and why? (Burnett & Merchant, 2011, p. 43).
6.3. Participatory technologies as a choice
Using social media is only one of many digital tools we can offer
our students. While there are benefits for new teachers to create
professional learning networksdconnecting with seasoned teach-
ers, and the gathering and sharing of resourcesdwe must
acknowledge not all experiences are the same. Thus students need
to have a choice whether or not to enter (or remain) in these
spaces: Students need to understand the affordances as well as the
risks. When you join Twitter, you are agreeing to the risks of
participation, as Twitter's 2018 Terms of Service stated: “You may
be exposed to Content that might be offensive, harmful, inaccurate
or otherwise inappropriate.” Therefore, it is with informed consent
that you enter into a space like Twitter and accept these risks.
Some suggestions for practice are to offer other venues that
provide opportunities for creating a participatory, collaborative,
peer-to-peer experience, such as blogging sites more conducive to
in-depth conversations (e.g., Medium or Tumblr). As such, using
social media sites can also be an asset for introverted students, as
they are conducive to including these students who are more
“reticent” (Carpenter et al., 2017) to participate in large groups.
Offering an exploration of diverse social media with preservice
teachers, for the best digital tool to leverage benefits to diverse
students, is important. However, in a critical social media literacy,
92 J. Nagle / Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94
students need to be well informed (Blankenship, 2010) about the
sites they participate within, and teacher educators need to offer a
range of materials and tools for students to use to engage with
course content and their peers in multiple ways.
6.4. Ways to respond: Witnessing and experiencing cyber-violence
Students need to be made fully aware of the risks, not only to
themselves but to others, when entering a social media environ-
ment. They also need supportive tools to deal with harmful content.
It is evident that White and Black women, specifically, are “making
changes to the places they go, the debates they join, the material
they post” (Jane, 2017, p. 45) all to avoid cyber-violence. Twitter
offers users the ability to mute or block users, and there are ways of
reporting offensive content, but that does not mean the content is
removed. Reporting content implies the risk of exposure has
already occurred, which can have harmful effects on students.
However, students and teacher educators need ways to respond
when witnessing or experiencing cyber-violence if they choose to
enter into or remain within social media spaces.
Though social media purports itself to be constructed around a
community, trolls seek to disrupt these communities. One popular
way to combat this disruption is to stop feeding the trolls
(Woodward, 2016): simply ignoring the vitriol. Having some un-
derstanding of the purpose of trolling or flaming, which sole pur-
pose is to instigate and conflagrate a response, positions the abuse
in a way separate from the user who is either receiving the abuse or
witnessing it. Trolls want a reaction, and if they do not get one, the
idea is they will move to another target. Another way to respond is
by outing trolls. Outing is done by republishing (retweeting) their
noxious tweets for the public to see, and a public shaming ensues.
Unpleasant as witnessing this violent content can be, those who use
this strategy want the public to understand their online reality and
rally assistance from their online community. Though outing ex-
poses other users to the abusive content, it can provide a com-
munity of support. While focusing specifically on women in
academia, Veletsianos, Houlden, Hodson, and Gosse (2018, pp.
1e20) also found that women were experiencing cyber-violence
online. Their findings suggest that women, whether in academia
or not, cope with the harassment and abuse in similar ways. One
suggestion for coping with online violence was sharing these ex-
periences with “partners, friends, colleagues, their institution and
law enforcement” (Veletsianos & Hodson, 2018, n.p.). In this way,
the onus is placed on the institution and urges them to develop
clear and supportive ways to deal with cyber-violence. As Vele-
sianos and Hodson mentioned, institutions need to develop
training and policies to support professors being harassed. Though
recommended for the academy, these recommendations could be
applied to its students as well, as a further venue of advocacy and
care for students experiencing or witnessing cyber-violence.
Others avoid witnessing abusive content by not reading public
comments, self-filtering the content, or focusing their attention
elsewhere. However, responses to cyber-violence are personal, and
there are no definitive ways to combat it. Discussions around ways
to address it may help those students experiencing violence, and
may also help students unfamiliar with cyber-violence begin to
understand differing online realities.
6.5. Guidance and scaffolding with social media tools
In education, digital tools are just that, tools. Digital tools assist
teachers and students in being able to communicate and represent
knowledge and understanding in new, multimodal ways. However,
when we allow the tool to take over, without both teacher and
student awareness of the affordances or drawbacks, the tool
becomes ineffective. We cannot make any assumptions that stu-
dents know how to leverage the affordances of a multiplicity of
digital tools simply because they grew up in a digital era. The
concept of the digital native is a myth (Brown & Czerniewicz, 2010),
and just because students are immersed in a digital culture does
not signify their competence with it or an understanding of how to
leverage their knowledge of various technologies for use in
educational ways.
Guidance and scaffolding are necessary inclusions to intro-
ducing any digital tool, even social media tools, within teacher
education. In a critical social media literacy, teacher educators teach
the tool first. It is also important to keep in mind that students may
not even be using popular technologies, and as Cook and
Bissonnette (2016) cautioned, some technologies may be popular,
but “popularity does not guarantee that all students will enjoy the
experience equally.” (p. 104). Teacher educators, therefore, assist
preservice teachers to bridge personal uses of social media to uses
conducive within an educational space. Teacher educators also
need to monitor the tool to provide guidance with the variety of
ways it can be used and experienced, perhaps in unintended ways.
As Carpenter et al. (2017) suggested, extending discussions of
Twitter use within the classroom, where students can reflect and
share their experiences, is needed. Together, teacher educators and
new teachers can use Twitter to engage and support their profes-
sional learning, and to use it as a tool to “try on and practice a
professional identity” (p. 54). But this use for professional learning
needs to be implemented with guidance and continued support,
while feeling supported in using these new technologies.
These strategies to develop a critical approach to social media
literacy is not meant to be exhaustive. Further strategies can be
developed together with preservice students as a way to attend to
differing needs of student groups. Through this development,
preservice students can be offered opportunities to participate in a
digital technology that enhances and supports their professional
learning.
7. Implications
By exploring the issue of how diverse peoples experience social
media, specifically on Twitter, data show a participation gap that
extends far beyond online spaces. Research conducted on the social
media practices of preservice teachers highlight the experiences of
Whiteness. In the U.S. and Canada, there are significantly more
White teachers in our classrooms even though our students are
becoming ever more racially diverse. In 2011 in the U.S., 82% of
teachers were White, while only 18% of teachers represented
people of colour, and specifically, only 8% of teachers were Black,
and 7% of the teachers were Hispanic (Allen, 2017; U.S. Department
of Education, 2016). For Canada, in Ontario alone, which yields the
largest provincial population, 26% of the student population are
racialized while only 13% are represented in the teaching profession
(Ontario Alliance for Black School Educators, 2015). Given the
increasing nature of globalization, there is a lack of representation
of a culturally and linguistically diverse student population. This
gap will continue to widen if it is not addressed. Thus, the teaching
profession needs to recruit and retain more women and men of
colour (Allen, 2017).
This lack of representation also poses a problem when consid-
ering diverse experiences online. As research shows, White teach-
ers are more likely to be experiencing positive community and
conviviality, while those peoples outside this community
(including White women who become vocal in feminist and po-
litical discourse but are harassed in other disciplines as well
[Veletsianos & Hodson, 2018]) experience and witness cyber-
violence. Without a diversity of perspectives and experiences
 J. Nagle / Teaching and Teacher Education 76 (2018) 86e94
within teacher education, to uncover and make aware the dangers
of cyber-violence, we are at risk of colonizing digital spaces and
creating an imaginary cyberutopia; a space limited in its educa-
tional or pedagogical scope, and one that continues to perpetuate
the exclusion and marginalization of Black women, Indigenous
Peoples, People of Colour, and those in LGBTQ communities.
As shown in the recent literature, Twitter affords many benefits
to preservice teachers. While the experiences of those who choose
to remain outside of social media need to be respected, it is with
pedagogical expertise that teacher educators create diverse op-
portunities for new teachers to remain an integral part of the
classroom community and broader professional learning networks.
Social media sites offer the potential for a global audience to engage
in local and global participation. Expanding our networks, beyond
the like-minded, to include a diversity of perspectives is imperative
to what a multiliteracies and new literacies education seek to
provide. Twitter is a new space, which is open to vast and differing
experiences. Twitter provides an opportunity for teacher educators
and their preservice teachers to open themselves up to those
outside their like-minded communities. However, the risks asso-
ciated with this specific social media are real and can inflict ma-
terial harm. Social media must not be used unethically or
irresponsibly as an off-hand tool within diverse pedagogies.
Teacher educators, themselves, need to be made aware of the risks
and decide, perhaps with their students, whether the risks
outweigh the benefits. Those conversations need to happen
collaboratively and respectfully with students.
8. Conclusion
Current research into Twitter use in teacher education suggests
there are many benefits of using it as an educational tool. Benefits
include the creation and collaboration found within professional
learning networks, the connection with seasoned educators, the
sharing and gathering of resources, and finding new ways of using
technology within their practice. However, Twitter is also used as
an apolitical space for teachers where real debate is muted and
what is left is what the social media sites are inherently designed
fordconviviality. To stay in these spaces in this way is to inhabit a
space devoid of the abuse witnessed and experienced by others
outside of that community, and one that is at risk of understanding
itself as a cyberutopia. Current studies on Twitter use with pre-
service teachers and teacher educators suggest there is limited
research on the diversity of peoples and communities who use
these spaces, as well as research on those who leave and self-censor
their participation. Teacher educators need to engage with their
preservice students in critical ways to examine, understand, and be
aware of who has access to social media spaces and whose online
presence is being excluded. They need to be aware of the risks of
exposure to cyber-violence in the form of misogyny and racial hate,
especially for women of colour, and the material harm that ensues.
Teachers have an ethical responsibility to protect their students,
yet they also have an ethical responsibility to enter into difficult
conversations with their students to uncover dominant narratives,
which exist and shape our existing communications via social
media. By using a critical social media literacy, teachers and pre-
service teachers alike can enter into a necessary dialogue to become
informed by examining the social media sites they use and by
examining diverse participation. This dialogue must acknowledge
that not everyone is experiencing cyberspace in the same ways.
Such conversations will also create an understanding that partici-
patory technologies are a choice with risks, which need informed
consent. There needs to be open dialogue in teacher education
about how to respond to cyber-violence and an awareness that the
teacher educator will be their guide through the process, to scaffold
93
and model ways of using social media as a pedagogical tool, despite
these risks. From the research reviewed in this paper and the
exploration of cyber-violence in the social media space, specifically
Twitter, it is apparent that more research is needed on the diverse
social media sites that students use to understand how the affor-
dances of these social media can be leveraged educationally, if at all.
Acknowledgements
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding
agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
There are no competing interests in the submission of this work.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.08.014.
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