Open Collections

Morales, Esteban

University of British Columbia

As social media platforms—such as Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp— have become an inescapable element of our lives, they have also become spaces where we regularly encounter, experience, and make sense of violence. These ecologies of online harm have profound implications in settings with long-lasting histories of armed conflict—such as Colombia, the context of this study—as cultures of violence become gradually more intertwined with digital platforms. Accordingly, this dissertation examines Colombian young adults’ views on and experiences concerning violence on social media. To address this research objective, I draw from a case study where Colombian young adults discussed the violence they interacted with in their everyday uses of digital platforms, examining how violence on social media is experienced and understood by users. The findings of this dissertation are organized in three sections: 1) the violence that young people encounter in their everyday engagements with digital platforms, 2) the processes of meaning-making around violence, and 3) the potential of education as a device of estrangement toward violence. Overall, this dissertation emphasizes how social media is now a crucial element through which we live with violence. Indeed, the findings of this dissertation highlight the critical role that social media platforms play in contemporary cultures of violence in Colombia—due to its pervasiveness, complexity, and processes of mediation in citizens’ meaning-making around harm and peace. In this context, education—and more specifically, critical dialogue and reflection—emerges as a productive space to unground existing cultures of violence and support peacebuilding processes.

Text

2024-03-04

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87516

Language and Literacy Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/