The Hashtag Syllabus as Class Assignment: From Information Literacy to Cultural Critique

Abstract

In recent years, scholar-activists have used hashtag syllabus movements to organize and share curricular resources related to pressing social and cultural issues in a widely accessible format. These collaboratively designed readings lists have provided many classroom-based educators with diverse and far-reaching texts with which to engage students on issues of social injustice and structural inequality. In this paper, we argue that having students develop hashtag syllabi in the context of interdisciplinary social science courses not only provides access to a breadth and depth of content knowledge and a range of perspectives on these topics but creates the conditions in which students can develop and strengthen critical information literacy skills. Using example assignments from introductory and upper-level undergraduate courses, we demonstrate the potential of these assignments to promote deep learning, challenge hegemonic knowledge production, address the personal and affective components of research, and connect our students’ work in the classroom to problems that exist outside of it.

Keywords:

• critical information literacy
• media literacy
• digital pedagogy
• instructional design
• public pedagogy

Subject classification codes:

• cooperative learning
• critical thinking
• curriculum
• interdisciplinary
• internet
• syllabus

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Notes

1 Notably, two of the most famous movements of the past twenty years that centered hashtag campaigns were also developed or led by Black women. The #metoo movement, while initially attributed by many news outlets to a 2017 viral tweet by actress Alyssa Milano, was started by activist Tarana Burke in 2006, and the Black Lives Matter Network was started in 2013 by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi.

2 For additional information on the history of collective knowledge production in African-American communities, please see Heather Andrea Williams’ Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (2006) and “The History of Non-Digital, Crowdsourced Knowledge” in Alyssa P. Lyons’ article, “Hashtag Syllabus,” published by the American Sociological Association (2019).