Social Class, Literacies, and Digital Wastelands

Abstract

Digital practices and online spaces are wrought with political, social, and economic entanglements producing both what is known as traditional literacies and embodied literacies. As such, literacies of social class are embedded in digital practices and materially discursively produced through online spaces just as much as they are cultivated in other geographical places (i.e., communities, classrooms). Digital spaces have been used to shame poor and working-class people through stereotypical images, politically divisive rhetoric, and aesthetically charged platforms that produce class stratification. Perhaps less visible by many, digital spaces have also been used to cultivate literacies of class consciousness, solidarity, collectivity, and grossly inequitable distribution of wealth and resources. While “limited access” to online spaces might mean limited digital mobility, it might also mean limited exposure to the normalization of privilege and hatred curated in online spaces about working-class and working-poor people. And in a smaller way, it might mean limited exposure to discourses of class solidarity and power in the working class. In this chapter, we will explore some ways digital practices create literacies of social class and imagine the implications for youth and families identifying as working class or poor.