Youth from Refugee Backgrounds Positioning Their Identities Through Reaction Videos

Abstract

This ethnographic, qualitative case study empirically explores how six youth from refugee backgrounds positioned their identities through design choices in producing reaction videos—a popular YouTube genre—at school in their settlement context. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we identified three ways in which youth took ownership of how they were to be perceived by their classmates and teachers, establishing their identities in the classroom through: (a) knowledge brokering; (b) navigating gaze; and (c) playfully disrupting cohesion. The study makes a timely contribution to helping language and literacy researchers, educators, and teacher-educators better understand how digitally composing in YouTube genres such as reaction videos can be used to affirm the identities of youth from refugee backgrounds in school settings.