“Emotions are what will draw people in”: A study of critical affective literacy through digital storytelling

Abstract

This study explores the implications of critical affective literacy through digital storytelling projects produced by first‐year college writing students. The goal was to examine college students' affective and emotional responses to social justice issues, such as racial profiling, educational inequality, and animal protection, through the lens of digital storytelling. Pairing multimodal pedagogy with critical affective literacy, this study was carried out in two first‐year writing courses in the United States. The researcher who conducted this study also taught the class sessions. Employing the methodology of a qualitative case study, the author gathered information through conducting semi‐structured interviews with 11 students, observing the students' multimodal composition processes, and reviewing the students' digital storytelling videos. The analysis of the data showed that the participants performed critical emotional action when creating digital stories to draw the public's attention to social justice issues. This paper recommends that educators incorporate digital storytelling into social justice pedagogy and cultivate learners' critical affective literacy.