Utilizing Youth Media Practice to Influence Change: A Pretest–Posttest Study

Abstract

Purpose: Youth media practice (YMP) refers to various activities through which young people are empowered to express their views and develop critical reflectiveness via media productions. There is scant empirical research about YMP’s effectiveness. This study developed and field-tested an information and communication technology (ICT)–based YMP. Method: By using “My National/Ethnic Identity” as a heuristic production theme, a pilot study was conducted in Hong Kong in 2018. Participants shared and discussed photos online and conducted face-to-face presentations. The program was evaluated using a one-group pretest–posttest design. Participants included ( N = 20) Hong Kong Chinese students aged 18–24. Results: Participants’ need for cognitive closure decreased, self-esteem increased, and their essentialist views on ethnic identity decreased. Discussion: This study demonstrates that YMP has potential to be a change-making strategy for future social work practice, and proper use of ICT can create space and opportunities for such reflective conversations.

A narrative review of digital storytelling for social work practice

“…Digital media contents are editable, and they can enable participants to continually revise, elaborate, and prioritise their expressions during the intervention process. Some DST practices have demonstrated that allowing participants to edit and re-edit their messages can enable them to make better-informed judgements, because this conveys an important message to participantsall stories are allowed to be changed, until the last moment of creation (Chan & Holosko, 2019). Digital communication media supports participants to externalise their thinking and allows them to have opportunities to affirm, reject, or modify defining stories in their lives.…”

“…Further, recent DST practices have exploited the effects of asynchronous communication in a social media environment. For example, social media allow partitioned but continual feedback loops which create a sense of continuity and continual engagement (Chan & Holosko, 2017), online communication can induce a social disinhibition effect which makes service users more easily open themselves (Chan & Ngai, 2019), and practitioners can make use of asynchronous gaps to buy time to provide participants with supplementary or contrasting information (Chan & Holosko, 2019).…”

Digital Story Retelling – Evaluation of a Story-reading Workshop Promoting Open-mindedness in the Community

“…In the digital age, communication content can be visualized: they are synchronous/asynchronous, searchable and retrievable. These characteristic features enable ideas to be externalized and reviewed (Chan & Holosko, 2019;Chan, Ngai, & Wong, 2012). The prevalence of mobile phone technologies has greatly enhanced the feasibility of the O2O strategy.…”

“…Critical Thinking Disposition (CTD) was measured by the critical openness sub-scale (including seven rating questions) in the Critical Thinking Disposition Scale (Sosu, 2013). The subscale was translated into Chinese and used in a previous pilot study researching DST (Chan & Holosko, 2019). A higher CTD score indicated a stronger critical thinking disposition.…”

“…heard (Chan, in press;Chan & Holosko, 2019;Emert, 2013;Guse et al, 2013;Mnisi, 2015;Stacey & Hardy, 2011;Stenhouse, Tait, Hardy, & Sumner, 2013;Teti, Conserve, Zhang, & Gerkovich, 2016). However, most DST practices focus on helping protagonists (storytellers) gain insights and self-confidence, and it is not clear how these stories can equally impact their audiences.…”