Learning, Media and Technology

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Beyond risk: reducing the gap between diaspora youth

digital citizenship needs and school curricula

Amelia Johns, Anita Harris, Emily Booth, Gilbert Caluya & Jessica Walton

To cite this article: Amelia Johns, Anita Harris, Emily Booth, Gilbert Caluya & Jessica Walton (03
Feb 2025): Beyond risk: reducing the gap between diaspora youth digital citizenship needs and
school curricula, Learning, Media and Technology, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2024.2448549

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LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2024.2448549

Beyond risk: reducing the gap between diaspora youth digital

citizenship needs and school curricula
Amelia Johnsa, Anita Harrisb, Emily Boothc, Gilbert Caluyad and Jessica Waltonc
a
School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia; bAlfred Deakin Institute for
Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia; cSchool of Communication, University of
Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia; dSchool of Media, Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin
University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Young people’s digital citizenship education has often been approached Received 3 October 2023
from a risk perspective with less attention given to how young people use Accepted 7 November 2024
digital technologies to positively engage with social issues and citizenship
KEYWORDS
practices. Diaspora youth are further stigmatised, being defined as ‘at-risk’ Digital citizenship; digital
of greater harm from digital environments, which frames them as victims literacy; critical digital
or non-agentic. This article draws on qualitative research with diaspora citizenship; diaspora youth;
youth, as well as policymakers and educators, about their digital curriculum design
citizenship education needs, practices and views. We explore their
perceptions of digital citizenship: as a concept and practice, and also its
place and framing within Australian school education. The findings
reflect a disconnect between diaspora youth and key stakeholders
regarding the purpose and benefits of digital citizenship education. This
illustrates a need for a more nuanced approach that takes diaspora
youths’ own experiences, needs and aspirations seriously in the design
of school curricula.

Introduction
Digital citizenship is a contested concept in the field of education. In its early usage, it referred to the
opportunities that digital technologies presented to young people to participate broadly in society.
The priority was to equip young people with the necessary skills to create media and communicate
effectively online. The development of these skills was also closely connected with citizenship attri­
butes, with digital literacy being connected with the goal of developing responsible and ethical citi­
zens (Mossberger, Tolbert, and McNeal 2008).
However, recent developments have seen digital citizenship become more narrowly focused on
digital risks online, while classroom teaching has prioritised the development of young people’s
skills and behaviours to manage their own and others’ online safety. This shift can be traced to
highly publicised forms of digital misuse drawing the attention of the media globally between
2006-2010, such as incidents of youth suicide driven by sustained online bullying (Livingstone
and Third 2017; McCosker, Vivienne, and Johns 2016). In the US, this led to a review of the school
curriculum, with programs such as those formulated by Common Sense Media being introduced to
teach young people to make ‘safe, responsible, respectful choices online’ (Common Sense Media
2011; Jones and Mitchell 2016, 2064). The content of digital citizenship curriculum subsequently
became focused on topics such as internet safety, privacy and security, and cyberbullying.

CONTACT Amelia Johns [email protected] School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney, Level 5,
Building 10, 15 Broadway, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia
© 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. JOHNS ET AL.

While this ‘turn’ responded to a specific need, critical scholarship has argued that the ‘digital’
itself has subsequently been perceived as a place of unregulated and harmful activity, rather than
as an everyday networked space where young people socialise, connect, learn and engage with
ideas and communities (Harris and Johns 2021; Jones and Mitchell 2016; McCosker, Vivienne,
and Johns 2016; Third et al. 2019). Young people have also been reimagined less as agentic citi­
zens-in-making, and instead as either a risk to others online or vulnerable and in need of protection
(Black et al. 2022; Harris and Johns 2021; Pangrazio and Sefton-Green 2021).
In Australia, the establishment of the e-Safety Commissioner’s office in 2015 cemented the align­
ment of digital citizenship education with online safety. The Commissioner’s remit covered regu­
lation of harmful content, and resource development to educate young people on the risks of
cyberbullying, the unwanted sharing of sexual images and other online harms (e-Safety Commis­
sioner’s office n.d). This framing has subsequently informed school curriculum development. For
example, a recent review of the Australian curriculum was undertaken to change the ICT General
Capability to a Digital Literacy capability and to provide guidance on how it could be integrated
across all curriculum areas (ACARA 2021). Guidelines emphasised safety and wellbeing, while
information, evaluation and technical literacy skills have also been developed in line with changing
technologies. However, the civic dimensions of digital media use are less evident.
Diaspora youth1 are a significant and growing segment of the Australian youth population yet
have been understudied in relation to digital citizenship (Harris et al. 2022; Harris and Johns
2021). Risks associated with exposure to violent content, such as radicalisation (Caluya, Borovica,
and Yue 2018; Harris and Johns 2021) and mediated hate speech (e-Safety Commissioner’s Office
2019) have constructed them either as victims or perpetrators of social media misuse in ways that
limit their digital expression and participation.
However, media literacy programs that have emerged in Europe and other global contexts offer
alternative visions for Digital Citizenship Education by framing migrant and refugee youth2 as criti­
cal readers and makers of media. In these conceptualisations, migrant and refugee youth are viewed
as capable actors who use digital media to overcome barriers associated with the settlement process,
and their structural positioning (Bozdağ 2022; Bruinenberg et al. 2021). This is evident in the devel­
opment of skills and practices that allow them to act as digital brokers for their parents and grand­
parents (Leurs 2015; Worrell 2021); challenge online misinformation (Bozdağ 2022; Bruinenberg
et al. 2021); maintain cultural and identity expression (Fu 2018; Xu and Zhao 2022); contest racial
stereotypes (Choi and Cristol 2021; Fu 2018; Harris and Johns 2021; Xu and Zhao 2022); develop
new digital literacies (Gleason 2016), and contribute toward new forms of online political and civic
engagement as a result of the local and transnational networks that they participate and act in (Har­
ris and Johns 2021; Caluya, Borovica, and Yue 2018; Vromen et al. 2016).
Recognising and building on the agency and capabilities of diaspora youth should be a priority
given the increasing mediation and datafication of their everyday lives. Leurs and Ponzanesi (2024)
argue that ‘migration’ and ‘diaspora’ themselves are highly mediated and datafied conditions, with
diaspora communities facing ‘increased forms of datafied migration management, algorithmic sur­
veillance [and] control’ (2024, 17). In response, the scholarship has highlighted and promoted
forms of active civic and political participation to contest these inequalities (Emejulu and McGregor
2019; Choi and Cristol 2021; Johns 2014; Vromen et al. 2016). Still other examples highlight the
‘everyday’ acts (Harris et al. 2022) that diaspora youth engage in, which are marked less by engage­
ment in formal political processes and activism, and more by ‘everyday issues-based, localized and
youth-led processes that are culturally relevant and integrated into young people’s lives’ (Vromen
and Collin 2010; see also Harris et al. 2022; Harris and Johns 2021).
In this paper, we interrogate these competing meanings of and approaches to digital citizenship
education in relation to diaspora youth. We focus our inquiry on interviews and digital ethnogra­
phy with 26 Australian diaspora youth (including Australian born, migrant and refugee youth) and
their experiences of digital citizenship education as taught in schools across New South Wales
(NSW) and Victoria3, and as it is alternatively imagined and practiced in their everyday lives.
 LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 3

These responses are analysed and compared to semi-structured interviews with 7 adult stakeholders
(educators and policymakers) who were asked how they conceptualised, designed and implemented
digital citizenship education. This provides insight into contestations over how digital citizenship is
perceived, as a concept and a practice, and how this frames (and limits) its pedagogical value in
Australian schools.

From digital citizenship to online safety and beyond

To understand how digital citizenship education has come to be aligned with a risk and safety
framework – and to identify what this means for diaspora youth – we consider the external con­
ditions that prompted these changes but also how this occurred conceptually and discursively in
policy and educational programs. It is through this realignment that the association of digital citi­
zenship with meanings of literacy, participation, inclusion and agency became reinvested with
notions of citizenship as ‘control’ (McCosker, Vivienne, and Johns 2016; Third et al. 2019), whereby
young people are identified as vulnerable to online harm, and where they are imagined to need adult
management of their digital media use to remain safe (Harris et al. 2022, 20; Third et al. 2019, 24).
As Pangrazio and Sefton-Green (2021, 15–16) argue, the way that these concepts are constructed or
modified matters, as it is through this work that they come to act normatively on young people,
shaping and limiting how they conceptualise and engage with digital technologies.
Digital citizenship in its earliest conceptualisation was intertwined with digital literacy and
focused on fostering technical skills to equip young people to confidently navigate the economic,
social and political opportunities of the internet and global digital networks (Mossberger, Tolbert,
and McNeal 2008). ‘Citizenship’ was a key concept, with Mossberger et al. identifying young
people’s online engagement as potentially facilitating civic and political knowledge and partici­
pation, fulfilling the ideal of ‘active citizenship’. A parallel concern was the possibility of socio-econ­
omically disadvantaged youth being left behind if they didn’t have access to digital technologies or
the requisite skills to participate online. These concerns prioritised digital literacy education as a
means to achieve social inclusion, equal opportunity and ‘rights’ for marginalised groups (Mossber­
ger, Tolbert, and McNeal 2008).
In the 2010s, in many Anglophone countries, concerns regarding emerging risks and threats to
young people’s online safety shifted digital education in a new direction. Digital literacy, in the US,
became reconceptualised towards teaching the technical skills to keep young people safe (Jones and
Mitchell 2016) such as ‘understanding and using privacy settings, practicing identity theft beha­
viours, creating safe passwords, and avoiding scams’ (Buchholz, DeHart, and Moorman 2020,
12) instead of being equipped with ‘critical digital literacy skills’ so crucial for informing citizenship
(Jones and Mitchell 2016, 2064). This was also reflected in the Australian educational landscape.
The establishment of the e-Safety Commissioner’s office responded to persistent concerns regarding
young people’s vulnerability and the potential for harm in digital environments. In this context,
educational institutions were ‘allocated a growing role in regulating digital environments’ (McCos­
ker, Vivienne, and Johns 2016, 21), with attention shifting from broadening youth digital partici­
pation to seeking to ‘contain and corral young people into acceptable modes of digital practice’
(Harris et al. 2022, 20).
While this shift has shaped policy and curriculum changes in Australia and the Asia Pacific
(Johns et al. 2022), the US and U.K (Livingstone and Third 2017), this is not reflected in other global
contexts. Notably, the Council of Europe has strengthened connections between digital citizenship
education and building young people’s capacity for democratic inclusion and participation. The
council’s website and main interface with policymakers, educators and parents state that its pro­
grams are designed to ‘provide young citizens with innovative opportunities to develop the values,
attitudes, skills, and knowledge necessary for every citizen to participate fully and assume their
responsibilities in society’ (Council of Europe n.d.) This is also reflected in a more critical scholar­
ship and curriculum development, which discursively centres citizenship and participation rights in
4 A. JOHNS ET AL.

how digital citizenship is considered and taught. More than this, it also stresses the concept’s associ­
ation with a range of other competencies for civic learning and citizenship including: global citizen­
ship, intercultural understanding and media literacy (McDougall et al. 2018, 31).
Connected with the early work on digital citizenship which focused on digital access and
inclusion of marginalised groups, the European scholarship also has a strong focus on enhancing
migrant and refugee youths’ digital citizenship and critical media literacy skills with the aim of
encouraging resilience, critical thinking and ‘sense-making’ in the face of persistent inequalities
and a more complex media environment (Bruinenberg et al. 2021; Leurs 2015; Leurs and Ponzanesi
2024). Moreover, these programs utilise participatory pedagogical approaches to media literacy edu­
cation with refugee and migrant youth, harnessing existing media creation skills and literacies, rather
than relying on a top-down, one-size-fits all model (Bozdağ 2022; Bruinenberg et al. 2021, 26).
While these approaches are supported by the European policy environment, in other contexts
the scholarship has continued to call for an expansion of digital citizenship and digital literacy edu­
cation in its more ‘critical’ and ‘participatory’ dimensions (Buchholz, DeHart, and Moorman 2020;
Pangrazio and Sefton-Green 2021). This is reflected in scholarly calls to centre citizenship’s focus on
rights, as it relates to participation, rather than narrowing the focus to protection (Harris and Johns
2021; Livingstone and Third 2017); and in its more expansive and ‘radical’ definitions (Choi and
Cristol 2021; Emejulu and McGregor 2019) it involves a social justice orientation reflected in learn­
ing skills that foster collective identity formation and social action. This has often been conceptu­
alised in the literature in relation to ‘acts of citizenship’ (Isin and Ruppert 2020; McCosker,
Vivienne, and Johns 2016; Yue, Nekmat, and Beta 2019) such as participation in digital activism
and social change movements (Vromen 2017) or engaging in online debate regarding issues
such as climate change (Pangrazio and Sefton-Green 2021), Black Lives Matter (Choi and Park
2023), and gender equality (Henry, Vasil and Witt 2022; Yue, Nekmat, and Beta 2019). It is also
recognised in acts that nurture the creation of digital safe spaces for gender- and sexually diverse
people (Johns et al. 2022).
This step ‘beyond’ the online safety paradigm prioritises skills that encourage young people to bet­
ter understand themselves in relation to society and empower themselves to protect their own rights,
as well as those of others. Nonetheless, prioritising linkages between digital citizenship and the
broader goals of social participation and rights has too often remained an aspiration that has failed
to translate into school curricula in the Australian context, to the detriment of diaspora youth who
are often apprehended as an ‘at-risk’ subject in need of protection (Caluya, Borovica, and Yue
2018; Harris et al. 2022, 137). Even when resources include specific documents aimed to support
First Nations youth, LGBTQI + youth, and young people with disabilities (Harris and Johns 2021),
their framing still seeks to minimise harm to a vulnerable population (Harris et al. 2022, 138).
In studies directly dealing with the digital citizenship needs of diaspora youth, nurturing existing
digital skills and capabilities has been a key focus to overcome ‘deficit’ framings, with the literature
highlighting digital media use to: keep in touch with family overseas, thereby fulfilling familial obli­
gations; cultural identity formation; connecting with networks of support to assist with settlement
(for migrant and refugee youth), mental health and racial discrimination (Caluya, Borovica, and
Yue 2018; Harris and Johns 2021; Johns 2014). Racism and experiences of inequality and disadvan­
tage are a persistent barrier to diaspora youth participating more actively in society; a development
which has led them to be regarded as ‘disengaged’ from civic life (Harris, Wyn and Younes,
2010; Harris and Roose 2014). But these experiences have also increased the desire of some
young people to use social media networks to ‘have a voice’ on issues impacting their communities
and to stake their claim as rights-bearing citizens (Caluya, Borovica, and Yue 2018; Johns 2014).
While this is often framed in relation to more active modes of citizenship, such as public posting,
liking and sharing, promoting a view that only ‘active citizenship’ norms matter, some scholars have
further acknowledged ‘quiet acts of citizenship’, where civic practices and cultural identity mainten­
ance occurring in informal, semi-private spaces on the internet are also framed as acts of citizenship
(Yue, Nekmat, and Beta 2019, 107–109). This is an important conceptual development in the
 LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 5

scholarship, given stereotypes that view some diaspora youth as being withdrawn from civic and
political life, or having a civic deficit.
We draw upon and extend these approaches in this paper, to take account of how digital citizen­
ship is framed pedagogically in Australian schools and perceived by students and key adult stake­
holders, how diaspora young people conceptualise and enact digital citizenship themselves and
identify their own needs, and by highlighting capabilities that we argue should be further nurtured
in school curricula.

Methods and materials

The data informing this paper was collected from 2020-2022 for a project on diaspora youth and
digital citizenship. We draw on semi-structured interviews involving 26 diaspora young people,
aged 13-21, with further insights provided by a subset of 11 diaspora young people who took
part in digital ethnography exercises over a period of several months in 2021. We conducted
semi-structured interviews with a further 12 adult stakeholders responsible for the design and deliv­
ery of digital citizenship curricula, policy and services, although due to the focus of this paper the
view of 5 stakeholders have been excluded.
Diaspora youth participants were recruited through a NSW high school (de-identified) and
through multicultural youth service providers, one in Victoria and two in NSW (de-identified).
COVID-19 restrictions, and the challenges schools and youth services experienced in maintaining
engagement with young people during online schooling, limited the sample’s diversity. Nonethe­
less, included were young people whose parents or grandparents were born in India, Afghanistan,
Southeast Asia, Iran, as well as a smaller number with European or Latin American heritage. Three
young people had migrated to Australia as refugees. Interviews were conducted on Zoom and ques­
tions focused on everyday social media use, social networks and connections (local, transnational),
linkages with online civic and political practices, experiences of digital citizenship education in
schools, and how young people defined and practiced digital citizenship. After the interviews,
young people were invited to take part in digital ethnography exercises using the Indeemo mobile
ethnography platform. The platform allowed participants to share relevant social media content
with the researchers over several months, and reflect upon their daily media engagement.
Interviews were also conducted with key adult stakeholders, including: 4 educators, from one
public school (de-identified) and the remaining from the private sector, 3 government policymakers
(de-identified), and 5 multicultural youth service workers (data not used in this paper). A table of
participants is in Appendix i and ii. A stakeholder workshop was conducted at the conclusion of the
data collection phase, in October 2022, with further participation of policymakers from the NSW
Department of Education, Office of the e-Safety Commissioner and the Victorian Department of
Education and Training. This workshop informed the recommendations later discussed.
At the conclusion of data collection, Interview and ethnographic data were transcribed, identify­
ing information was removed and the data was transferred to Nvivo for coding and analysis. Two
members of the research team independently coded the data and then shared their insights to
develop a codebook based on emerging themes and concepts relevant to the project.
Next, we discuss our findings, which indicated differences between adult stakeholders and dia­
spora youth in terms of how digital citizenship was conceptualised, how it was framed pedagogically
and how it was practiced, both in school and in diaspora youth’s everyday lives.

Findings
Stakeholder definitions of digital citizenship
Among the stakeholders, how digital citizenship was conceptualised and how diasporic young
people’s needs were understood differed according to occupation, seniority of role, and the
6 A. JOHNS ET AL.

stakeholder’s remit in terms of design and delivery of digital citizenship education. However, edu­
cators and policymakers consistently framed their responses in relation to the ‘risk and safety’ para­
digm as outlined.
Government policymakers explained that how they defined digital citizenship and online safety
was framed and, in some senses, limited by their remit, which was to address online harm and
safety; as such, they created training and resources for educators, social workers, parents and
other stakeholders to deal with ‘increased incidents of cyberbullying in schools’ among other online
harms. Because of this focus, they perceived digital citizenship to be the responsibility of other
key stakeholders:
it’s interesting the way that you’re using digital citizenship, because that’s just not a term that we’ve ever really
used. I think it’s a construct of the [state and territory educational departments] have got their digital citizen­
ship, you know, website. But our remit is around online safety … We know what we mean by online safety. It’s
about online risks and harms and … educating young people about those things. (Sandra)

Nonetheless, some of Sandra’s colleagues advocated for a more holistic approach, with Dale arguing
against the ‘siloing’ of online safety education into Health or IT sections of the curricula:
we’d like to see, you know, online safety education, not taught standalone in HPE [Health and Physical Edu­
cation] or technologies, but taught across all curriculums. And I think that’s a way of sort of, you know, seeing
how that program connects with your civics curriculum.

For a high school principal and other educational providers, digital citizenship was more broadly con­
ceptualised; covering aspects of digital participation and opportunities for classroom learning, as well
as online safety. For example, we interviewed the principal (Patricia) of a high school that was located
in a low socio-economic catchment of Sydney, who spoke of the school’s investment in Google class­
rooms to ensure that students had the same access to digital technologies as students in other parts of
Sydney. She told us: ‘It’s [digital technologies] just a part of life … the world has changed … as part of
preparing our kids, we have to keep them ahead or as close to the game as possible.’ But despite her
having this concept of digital technologies as integral to ‘life’ and future opportunities, the majority of
the discussion centred on misuse and how to limit the distracting and destructive potential of digital
technologies in the classroom and at home. Incidents of misuse, such as sexting and the circulation of
rumour and harassment, happened in the private homes and leisure time of young people, and then
spilt over into the school environment, making the issue difficult to manage:
So because the digital device allows that they’re sitting in their bedrooms at night, under the covers and on
their phones. And he said, she said, and sexting and all that other stuff that goes into that world. And then
the next day, or usually Monday, it comes out here … We tend to only deal with it when it actually comes
into the school and causes disruption here … but it is really challenging, to the point that last week we are
starting to look at where we go with this?

Other risks were so serious that police charges had been laid. As discussed by Patricia, leaning more
toward the protection and ‘control’ side was often a practical necessity for principals, who had to
balance student welfare and educational needs against the ever-present challenge of dealing with
parental complaints and reputational damage for the school if digital misuse led to police interven­
tion. This was also reflected in the inclusion of programs run by a Police Liaison Officer who taught
the students about digital risks and harms from a legal viewpoint. While Patricia lamented the
absence of a focus on the civic dimensions of digital media use, she felt her role was more often
taken up with ‘putting out spot fires’.
Beyond legal implications, the challenge of students becoming distracted by mobile phones in
class had prompted the school to introduce a ban on mobile devices during class-time, even before
NSW issued a state-wide school ban on mobile devices. This was discussed as a vital part of edu­
cating young people about the appropriate use of technology.
By contrast, a junior teacher we spoke to, who worked at the same school as Patricia, was inter­
ested in participatory learning and digital literacy, and frustrated by the absence of more
 LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 7

meaningful discussions around these topics in student lives. He argued for teaching environments
where the benefits of technology for learning, including learning to be a citizen, were prioritised and
felt these opportunities were lost because older teachers were ‘scared’ of technology. This was high­
lighted during COVID-19, when schools pivoted to remote learning. To overcome problems like
socio-economically disadvantaged students not having access to a computer at home, and more
likely having access to a smartphone, he sent home paper-based learning materials with a QR
code that students could scan with their mobile phones to access engaging content. But he had
to quickly revert back to paper-based resources because of the school’s no mobile phone policy.
When referring to the more ‘civic’ dimensions of digital citizenship, he claimed that too often
these programs get cut, especially in the schools in lower socio-economic areas. This is because
poor learning outcomes and behavioural challenges often become higher priorities: ‘it’s hard to
prioritise digital literacy when they don’t have literacy … you know what I mean?’
Finally, operational challenges, particularly during the pandemic, have made schools increas­
ingly dependent on outsourcing digital citizenship education to the private sector. We spoke to
one former primary school teacher, Eric, who had started a business delivering digital safety edu­
cation in schools. He claimed that, for risk-averse schools, due diligence often meant hiring oper­
ators accredited through the e-Safety Commissioner’s office:
I’d seen it advertised on their website and on socials. And so I wanted to make sure I was sort of - on point for
them. So I applied myself as a business. It came down to having personal references from schools … showing
work samples … [and joining] the community that, that we now meet quarterly as ‘trusted E-Safety Providers’.

This is another way the shift from a participation and rights lens to an online safety lens has become
normalised, with accreditation through the e-Safety office often being part of the vetting process
schools go through to select digital citizenship programs and vendors. However, educators and
government policymakers were also often keen to implement changes that connected online safety
and civics education. Failure to do so was driven less by conceptual limitations and more by policy-
driven objectives, and commercial and operational pressures faced by schools, contributing to a
narrow focus on online safety pedagogy.
These tensions were also highlighted in relation to stakeholder perceptions of diaspora youth’s
needs, where anxiety regarding misuse, and a tendency to view diaspora youth as being more ‘at-
risk’ framed responses. Again, government policymakers emphasised this perspective:
We have research with a lot of different communities that say that there are certain individuals or certain com­
munities who do come across the online harms to a greater extent. And that’s why we try to develop resources
to help those different communities (Dhara).

When explaining possible causes of this increased exposure to harm, policymakers and educators
cited concerns that parents of diaspora youth often lacked the digital or English literacy to
sufficiently monitor their children’s use and impose limits:
We’ve heard this from a number of schools that those kids of parents where English is a challenge, they are
often more at-risk because of what they’re getting up to … So, we’ve been told by principals that those kids are
the ones being exposed to more content online that is inappropriate (Eric, private trainer).

Employing such anecdotes about diaspora youth being ‘more at-risk’ doubles the ‘at-risk’ framing
of youth more generally by viewing ethnicity and migration as added markers of risk. The danger in
this perspective is that it may underappreciate diaspora youth’s own capabilities and agency, as well
as their parents’ and even whole communities’ who are constructed as failing to meet standards of
‘good’ digital citizenship.

Diaspora youth definitions of digital citizenship

Contrasting with policy makers and educators, diaspora youth participants conceptualised digital
citizenship using a range of concepts and feelings, drawing on both active and ‘quiet’ repertoires
8 A. JOHNS ET AL.

of engagement. However, the younger group often deferred to adult stakeholder frames of risk and
safety. For example, Sophie (13) referred to digital citizenship as ‘how you do things online … Are
you using it in a positive way to connect to your friends and family? Or are you using it in a negative
way to spread mean things about other people?’ Samantha (15) told us ‘I do try to be safe online … I
try to think through … what would happen if I post this?’ For participants aged 16 years and older,
responses were more likely to focus on opportunities for creating and sharing ideas, intercultural
engagement, or thinking critically about the world and their role in it. For some, the status of ‘digital
citizen’ referred to anyone who created and shared, or engaged with online content. This was
confirmed by Heidi (16) Ying Ying (17), Sujith (14), and Devi, a student of Indian-Punjabi heritage
who ran her own meme accounts on Instagram:
someone who engages and consumes technology, knows how to use it well, and also creates, also can learn on
it, share stuff on it. Someone who basically is in the online world. (Devi, 17)

Beyond this broad definition, Charlotte (19) and Audrey (16), regarded being a digital citizen as
entailing responsibilities that went beyond simply accessing technology. This included developing
awareness of other cultures and perspectives to become informed about the world and to take
responsibility for one’s actions:
being a digital citizen is much more than just how much time you spend online … it invites you to engage with
the world around you, regardless of geographical barriers, language barrier, cultural barriers, and so on. …
and choosing what to do with this information that we’re given. (Charlotte)

being a citizen online can help us be better citizens of the world because we’re able to meet people from around
the world and like hear more about their cultures. (Audrey)

For others, having a voice online was not just about expressing personal beliefs and views, but also
about raising awareness of global social issues, and advocating for change. Yasmina, who was of
Iranian background, outlined that the media environment in Iran didn’t allow people to express
themselves freely. This led her to the view that digital citizens need to advocate for citizens of
countries who are denied a voice:
I think it’s important for the citizens of Australia to raise awareness and protest about stuff … because they’re a
free country and they have the access to like using information … I feel like if you had that access, you should
… also raise awareness for people who … don’t have that same opportunity. (Yasmina, 18)

These responses were also shared by participants of the Hazara community of Afghanistan, all of
whom had arrived on humanitarian visas prior to the 2021 Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. For
these young women, sharing information posted by activists to their local digital networks was
important given that women and girls were being silenced in their homeland. As Noor (15) told
us: ‘I feel like the world just closed their eyes to it because it is a norm in the Middle East …
And so people don’t really care … I still try to raise that awareness.’ This indicates that, by broad­
ening people’s understanding of the world, digital citizenship should involve a sense of global social
responsibility. This was contrasted with what was currently offered in school, which was focused on
legal perspectives of harm and safety:
I’ve forgotten what the workshop was, but I think like police came to our high school to like talk about …
significant things that your teen life might involve … you know … like sending nudes, but I think that’s
only like because of a legal thing (Yingying).

I think we’ve had lessons on like internet safety and cyberbullying. I wouldn’t say as much about being a digital
citizen specifically. (Audrey)

Diaspora youth everyday digital practices and needs

When diaspora youth expressed their needs and practices regarding digital citizenship, what often
came to mind was what they learned informally, through friends, family or with community, rather
 LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 9

than what they learned through formal education. This has also been highlighted in the literature,
with young people’s digital citizenship practices often bypassing formal expressions of civic and
political participation, and instead emerging from everyday, culturally relevant issues and concerns
(Vromen and Collin 2010; see also Harris et al. 2022; Harris and Johns 2021). As Devi told us, social
media allowed her to connect with friends and family, locally and overseas; it also provided a space
where she could be with her own culture and community and feel a sense of belonging. In a screen
recording shared on Indeemo, she told us that there weren’t many people who shared the same cul­
ture, interests and experiences as her in primary school. But when she went to high school she
became friends with young people from similar cultures and felt a greater sense of connection
that was nurtured through social media accounts on Instagram and WhatsApp: ‘In primary school,
like it was just never talked of, my colour, cause I’m North Indian. But yeah, with these people,
they’re also like me’. This view was reflected among most participants we spoke to, for whom What­
sApp and Instagram were cited as platforms that allowed them to connect with, share and learn
about their own communities and cultural identity.
Devi also spoke about Tik Tok as a platform where she followed, liked and engaged with Punjabi
content creators and other people of colour who shared cultural humour and knowledge that she
felt connected to. Many of these accounts were algorithmically selected for her by the platform. She
referred to this as ‘brown’ Tik Tok:
Because like, when I compare my ‘for me’ page to my friend’s pages … I guess I do get a lot of the brown com­
munity on it … That’s what we call ourselves I guess, and it’s just like, there’s a lot of social issues on there as
well …

This was a common theme, with Tik Tok and other social media providing a means of connecting
with and learning about one’s own culture, often through engagement with everyday popular digital
culture like influencers, memes and humour.
Diaspora youth perceived digital citizenship to be about more than personal safety, with digital
activism and advocacy being key practices. Yasmina followed journalists who covered Iranian poli­
tics and social issues on Instagram, and she reshared this content to raise awareness among her
peers and family:
I follow two main people … who posts stuff that people send in from Iran when people are getting abused by
the government or that people would get killed and all those sorts of issues … And I repost her posts on my
story so that people can see and sort of raise awareness about these issues … to get people to understand what’s
happening around the world, especially those who don’t have access to a lot of stuff, like my family in Iran.

In Noor’s social media feed, much of the content referred to the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. In
memos uploaded to Indeemo and a later interview, she told us that she shared news and calls for
action so other Australians might know what was happening (Figure 1).
#AfghanLivesMatter and associated tags, including #BlackLivesMatter and #AsianLivesMatter,
were frequently shared by participants, including Charlie (16), Zahra (17) and Ashley (16) who
were passionate about issues of racial injustice and found hashtag activism to be one way to address
the hate and racism that they also experienced in their everyday lives. Engagement with specific
platforms, such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Tik Tok, was associated with the opportu­
nity to express one’s self creatively and culturally, or through activism, but it also opened young
people to direct experiences of racism, with hate left in the comments often triggering withdrawal
(Kelly, 13) or anger, and an increased desire to intervene (Devi, 17):
As a person who constantly lives on TikTok, the amount of hate directed to people is horrendous. And as a
digital citizen, it makes me extremely angry when I see people like that. So what kind of digital citizen am I?
I’m someone who will call that person out.

While adult stakeholders also spoke of the importance of addressing online hate, there was little
discussion of how to collectively address the structural and root causes of its spread, nor how dia­
spora youth should respond. Often these responses were negotiated by diaspora youth themselves
10 A. JOHNS ET AL.

Figure 1. Screenshot shared by Noor, provides an example of activist content she reshared.

through direct experience and informal, peer-led communities of learning. In many cases the desire
to advocate for issues also co-existed with feelings of estrangement from community, and pressure
to adhere to social and/or cultural norms that were perceived to be repressive, leading to withdrawal
from social media engagement. These feelings were strongly expressed by a queer young person of
colour, Charlotte, for whom community participation at times triggered fear and withdrawal.
A lot of posts at the moment, I share them with friends, but I’m a bit too scared to publicly share a lot of them
… Because my parents aren’t necessarily supportive of my views, so that’s another hurdle … (Charlotte)

Fears clustering around the possibilities of offending peers and family members, and also the
effects of triggering content, was also raised by Noor and Zahra (17), both of whom advised that
 LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 11

content they encountered sometimes triggered poor mental health, leading them to disconnect at
times:
I find that if I expose myself to too much news I feel a bit rubbish basically. (Zahra)

This supports Choi and Christol’s view (2021) that an intersectional approach to digital citizenship,
which recognises the multiple layers of identity and barriers faced by diaspora youth, are important.
But rather than negative experiences always leading to disconnection or withdrawal, young
people in the study also engaged in other forms of digital labour that we refer to using the concept
of ‘quiet’ acts of digital citizenship (Yue, Nekmat, and Beta 2019). ‘Quieter’ acts (Yue, Nekmat, and
Beta 2019) presented lower stakes and were predominantly focused on finding information, learn­
ing about current issues, and moderating community comments or limiting one’s own speech, thus
shaping online social environments where hate and unfair treatment of people were less likely to
take hold.
For Amber (18), and Charlotte the tools to defuse toxic online cultures were learned through
everyday participation in digital communities and fandoms on Discord and Reddit. While these
platforms bring together like-minded people around topics of interest, they also tend to be less
moderated by the platforms, meaning there can be conflict and hostile differences of opinion.
But this was seen as a learning moment for Amber, who found that moderating her reactions to
people who held different views to her own, even when they were often faceless ‘avatars’, helped
to create safer online communities:
One thing I learned early on, and I think it’s very useful for me when speaking online, it’s always important to
make sure that you’re viewing the other person as an actual person, rather than just a digital identity … So
that’s the thing that’s most important for me as a citizen online.

Conclusion
Our research shows a gap between how digital citizenship is framed both conceptually and peda­
gogically in Australian schools, and how diaspora youth conceptualise it through the lens of
their own experiences and needs. Digital citizenship is conceptualised by educators and policy­
makers in relation to legal and individualised concepts of misuse and ‘online harm’. This informs
curriculum development, which is centred on skills young people need to protect themselves and
their personal identities online, how to alert responsible authorities (teachers, police) to threats
often perceived as interpersonal in nature (i.e., cyberbullying), and how to manage their online
behaviour to avoid harming themselves or engaging with harmful content. While early conceptu­
alisations of digital citizenship saw digital technologies as extending opportunities for young people
to participate in public life and have a voice on issues, in its current framing in policy and education,
a reductive focus on personal safety has become the norm (Buchholz, DeHart, and Moorman 2020;
Jones and Mitchell 2016; Pangrazio and Sefton-Green 2021). In this paper, we highlight the manner
in which a reductive focus in curricula overlaps with operational pressures that schools are under,
leading teachers and principals to allocate resources more often toward ‘putting out spot fires’ and
where digital citizenship education iss increasingly outsourced to the private sector.
The implications of this, while potentially impacting all young people, are more acutely felt by
diaspora youth who were more likely to be constructed as ‘at-risk’ subjects by stakeholders in this
study. This occurred through the targeting of risk-based policy research toward diaspora youth,
who have become framed as more likely to become victims of bullying, harassment and hate speech,
while anecdotal reports identified them as being regularly exposed to online harms and inappropri­
ate content as a result of their parents’ lack of digital literacy and supervision (see Centre for Multi­
cultural Youth, 2021, for similar findings). We argue that the implications of this deficit framing are
the likely increase of stigmatisation and exclusion of diaspora youth from feelings of belonging to
the school community and the broader society, leading to social harm and disengagement.
12 A. JOHNS ET AL.

Another important implication of these findings is that current school curricula fail to recognise
the capabilities diaspora youth regularly exhibit in their daily digital interactions, in terms of enga­
ging in civic and political actions, and responding to harmful content. Some of these capabilities
have been highlighted in the literature, where building diaspora youths’ digital capabilities is viewed
as essential to ensure greater social participation and resilience toward structural inequalities and
social harms such as racism (Emejulu and McGregor 2019; Harris and Johns 2021; Leurs and Pon­
zanesi 2024). These capabilities emerged in our in-depth exploration of diaspora youths’ digital acts
and practices, where digital citizenship was conceptualised and informed by a sense of social
responsibility to advocate for their own and the broader, global community, to learn about other
cultures, and to raise their voice against harms that were also more broadly conceptualised than
in the school curricula, and which often related to wider ‘social and discursive struggles’ (Emejulu
and McGregor 2019) such as the struggle for racial justice, or the impact of wars that strip away
young people’s rights to safety, freedom and protection. To address these harms, diaspora youth
used their digital voice to raise awareness and engage in collective struggles and acts where they
advocated for their own community and for principles of human rights. These principles resonated
across their engagement with digital communities of all kinds, including popular culture-driven
fandoms. While some participants did indicate that greater online participation had led to harmful
experiences, such as exposure to racism, navigating conservative family responses and poor mental
health, decisions to carry on, withdraw or engage through ‘quieter’ acts of citizenship were often
learned informally and through negotiation with peers rather than formal learning, which was
often considered to be out of touch.
It is timely and important to broaden reductive framings of digital citizenship in school cur­
ricula to develop a capabilities – and rights-based – model (Caluya, Borovica, and Yue 2018; Har­
ris et al. 2022; Harris and Johns 2021; Livingstone and Third 2017). This requires moving beyond
‘at risk’ framings of diaspora youth to instead recognise them as agentic actors who are already
engaging in practices that centre social responsibility, social justice and the building and main­
tenance of safe digital spaces. Support and recognition of these capabilities by policymakers
and school leadership would strengthen their development, and likely contribute to the creation
of more respectful and safer digital environments. Further, by focusing on narrow conceptions of
‘harm’ and developing teaching resources that protect against it, there is a danger that other
harms arise as an unintended consequence, such as stigmatisation of diaspora youth, parents
and communities, and possible withdrawal of voices critical to realising and building safer digital
communities. To address this, broadening the private and public actors involved in digital citi­
zenship curriculum development, to include community and advocacy organisations, as well as
co-designing curriculum with diaspora youth, will lead to more holistic and inclusive curricula.
This will benefit diaspora youth and all young people by increasing their confidence to think cri­
tically and responsibly about their role in global digital communities, rather than being fearful of
raising their voices.

Notes
1. By diaspora youth we mean young people who were born in Australia with at least one parent being born
overseas, or young people who were born overseas and migrated to Australia. These are also young people
who maintain connections with family and community in Australia and overseas.
2. We note the deviation from our own definition of diaspora youth here, but there are enough points of con­
nection to warrant comparison.
3. Both are states of Australia.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
 LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 13

Funding
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council, under Grant number: DP190100635.

Ethical clearance
The approval number is UTS HREC REF NO. ETH19-4206. Information sheets regarding the
research and any ethical risks relating to participation were discussed with youth participants,
and, where required, parental guardians. Full written and signed youth participant and parental
consent were obtained.

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Appendix
Appendix i: Diaspora youth participants

Interview ID Pseudonym (if used) Gender Age Ethnicity State

Participant 1 Sophie Female 13 Indonesian-Australian NSW
Participant 2 Charlotte Female 19 Indonesian- Chinese NSW
Participant 3 Devi Female 17 Indian-Punjabi VIC
Participant 4 Sujith Male 14 Indian VIC
Participant 5 Female 13 Greek Australian NSW
Participant 6 Female 16 Indian VIC
Participant 7 Zahra Female 17 Afghanistan-Hazara VIC
Participant 8 Male 13 Afghanistan- Hazara VIC
Participant 9 Noor Female 15 Afghanistan-Hazara VIC
Participant 10 Female 13 Afghanistan-Hazara VIC

(Continued )
 LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 15

Continued.
Interview ID Pseudonym (if used) Gender Age Ethnicity State
Participant 11 Female 14 Afghanistan-Hazara VIC
Participant 12 Samantha Female 15 Malaysian-Chinese NSW
Participant 13 Female 16 Indian WA
Participant 14 Audrey Female 16 Indonesian-Chinese NSW
Participant 15 Amber Female 18 Chinese-Australian VIC
Participant 16 Female 16 Malaysian-Chinese NSW
Participant 17 Female 18 Vietnamese-Australian VIC
Participant 18 Yasmina Female 18 Persian NSW
Participant 19 Male 15 Scottish-Australian NSW
Participant 20 Yingying Female 17 Chinese-Australian NSW
Participant 21 Female 21 Chilean-Italian NSW
Participant 22 Male 15 French-Australian NSW
Participant 23 Kelly Female 13 Hong-Kong NSW
Participant 24 Female 13 South Africa NSW
Participant 25 Female 18 American-Australian NSW
Participant 26 Male 15 Scottish-Australian NSW

Appendix ii. Adult stakeholders

Pseudonym (if
Interview ID used) Gender Role Organisation State
Participant 1 Patricia Female Principal De-identified public high school NSW
Participant 2 Cameron Male Teacher De-identified public high school NSW
Participant 3 Eric Male Private E-Safety Accredited Self-employed NSW
Trainer
Participant 4 Brian Male Google Educator Google NSW
Participant 5 Sandra Female Manager De-identified government NSW
policymaker
Participant 6 Dhara Female Program leader De-identified government NSW
policymaker
Participant 7 Dale Male Program leader De-identified government NSW
policymaker