Using a pilot program in one Chicago elementary school as a case study, this article reports findings of an ethnographic investigation on the impact of Hiphop based music education at the elementary school level. The findings describe how this program facilitated a process by which the youth participants were empowered through (a) identity building within a community of practice, (b) musical expression as internal critical dialogue and an external critical voice and, (c) a classroom ethos supportive of expression related to contemporary Black youth subjectivity. The findings of this study suggest that implementation of Rap music making as an in-school activity involves creative use of computer and multimedia technologies to develop novel social skills and competencies in elementary school youth and thus, also provides a framework for better promoting learning equity (race, ethnicity and class) with digital media and cultural responsiveness in urban education.

This article is an ethnographic study of a hip hop-based music education programme for students within elementary school classrooms. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in two urban schools, this case study describes how hip hop song composition encouraged participants to make essential and critical reflections about media’s place in their personal lives, peer groups, families and communities. The findings of this study suggest that the social and cultural capital of making hip hop music can contribute to bolstering academic learning for Black youth. Implications from this study also suggest informal interests and social identities rooted in hip hop music can connect youth to pathways for professions in creative labour, high-capacity technological skills, civic-mindedness and critical media literacy that could also transcend the classroom.

Using the Connected Learning framework as a conceptual lens, this study utilizes digital ethnographic methods to explore outcomes of a Hip-Hop Based Education program developed to provide music related career pathways for Chicago youth. Using the narratives of the participants within the program, I draw on participant observation online and in-depth interviews collected to explore the link between the tenets of Connected Learning and digital participation in this artistic community of practice. I explore participants’ work within social media platforms toward building their creative skill, cultivating a public voice, connecting to mentors, and communicating in ways that strengthens the social bonds within their peer community. This study’s findings affirm prior studies that suggest late adolescence is an important time frame where children are developing social identities online in affinity spaces but in ways that are tied to civic engagement, self-empowerment, and critical skill development for their future pathways. To conclude, I suggest that investigating participant activity on social media platforms as a part of field work can help ethnographers to better connect their impact to the agency and life trajectories of their youth participants.

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With increasing media choice, particularly through the rise of streaming services, it has become more important for empirical research to examine how youth decide which programs to view, particularly when the content focuses on difficult health topics such as suicide. The present study investigated why adolescents and young adults chose to view or not view season 1 of 13 Reasons Why and how individual-level variables related to adolescents’ and young adults’ viewing. Using survey data gathered from a sample of 1,100 adolescents and young adult viewers and non-viewers of the series in the United States, we examined how participants’ resilience, loneliness, and social anxiety related to whether participants viewed the first season or not. Our descriptive results indicate that adolescents who watched the show reported that it accurately depicted the social realities of their age group, they watched it because friends recommended it, and they found the subject matter to be interesting. Non-viewers reported that they chose not to view the show because the nature of the content was upsetting to them. In addition, results demonstrated that participants’ social anxiety and resilience related to participants’ viewing decisions, such that those with higher social anxiety and higher resilience were more likely to report watching season 1. Together, these data suggest that youth make intentional decisions about mental health-related media use in an attempt to choose content that is a good fit for based on individual characteristics.