Analyzing Newcomer Narratives in a Student-Produced Video on Integration Challenges

Abstract

This study sought to empower the perspectives of racial minority adolescent students by creating an opportunity to advocate for themselves and to seek change in the community they live in. The study took place in a highly diverse rural high school in Western Canada and included creating a social media advocacy campaign that addressed the challenges faced by these students. The researchers used Rose’s four sites for interpreting visual materials, focusing on a student-produced short film that depicted the issues and challenges of a racialized Muslim student, highlighting matters of belonging and the importance of building what is known as religious and racial literacy. The scholarship represents a transformational experience, encouraging student participants and administration to heighten awareness and understanding of self-advocacy in authentic discussions. It includes suggestions for teaching education programs, curriculum revisions, and pedagogical practices that awaken our sense of social justice.

Introduction

In recent years, Canadian schools have undergone a significant demographic shift due to increased immigration. The 2015 International Report Card on Public Education notes that Canada’s student population with immigrant backgrounds in Canada is significantly higher than the OECD average, with 29% of 15-year-olds, compared to just 11% across OECD countries. Immigrant youth face unique challenges when integrating into Canada (Zaidi, Veroba, Morina, & Palmer, 2024), and their experiences highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of Canada’s settlement system (Cohen, 2016; Kaufmann, 2021; Marshall et al., 2016).

As immigration to Canada continues to rise, schools are increasingly tasked with responding to the complex cultural and linguistic realities of their student populations. In this context, questions about equity, belonging, and representation have become more urgent. At the same time, no research has examined how students themselves can be positioned as advocates and active agents in addressing these challenges. This study addresses this gap by exploring how newcomer and immigrant youth use advocacy to share their experiences and drive change within their school communities. Through a collaborative partnership with school leaders, the research emphasizes the potential of student-led initiatives to not only reveal inequities but also create more inclusive and responsive educational environments.

This article examines the implications of a student-produced video about integration challenges faced by newcomers as they seek to assimilate into their new homeland. The video was produced as a result of an opportunity, provided by the school’s administration, for immigrant and newcomer students to advocate for themselves and others using a collective social media account. The study sought to answer the following question: How does the opportunity provided by school administration to work on a social media-based narrative project to share their stories or challenges influence the creativity of newcomer students?

The rationale behind using social media as a tool for students to share their narratives stands on the premise that screen is now replacing print text (Kress, 2003) and “young people, in general, are the most intense users of social media among all age groups” (Knapp & Waechter, 2021, p. 33). The findings from the Media Technology Monitor report suggest that 70% of children and adolescents use social media, and daily usage statistics reflect an 82% usage rate (Summerfield, 2023). Moreover, the most popular activity on social media for this age group is watching the videos, as 78% of children and adolescents use it primarily for that purpose (Summerfield, 2023). Thus, leveraging students’ familiarity and engagement with social media can become a powerful tool to advocate for social justice, especially within educational systems. Furthermore, “being literate in the 21st century requires critical engagement in . . . digital environments” (Watt et al., 2019, p. 257). This is because the concept of New Literacies extends well beyond traditional reading and writing, encompasses a broad range of competencies (Gee, 2015) such as digital, religious, and racial literacies, which enable individuals to thrive in a multicultural society.

Digital literacy can be defined as “the constellation of knowledge, skills, and competencies [to critically navigate, evaluate, and create information using digital technologies] for thriving in a technology-saturated culture” (Hobbs, 2017, p. 18). Racial literacy involves understanding, interpreting, and engaging with issues related to race and ethnicity, particularly encouraging individuals to recognize and challenge racial injustices and biases (Guinier, 2004). As with racial literacy, religious literacy entails a nuanced understanding of diverse religious traditions, practices, and beliefs, and seeks to avoid stereotypes as well as promote respect among individuals from different religious backgrounds (Dinham & Francis, 2015).

This research aims to shed light on the effectiveness of such initiatives and inform educational practices and policies that support integration for newcomer students. School administrations can work effectively toward this end by providing opportunities for immigrant and newcomer students to create and share their narratives through social media, and thereby potentially enhance students’ new literacy skills, while also fostering a sense of belonging and connection to the community.

Research Context

This study draws from a 2-year-long project aimed at empowering the perspectives of racial minority students. The project came to fruition when the principal investigator was approached by the administrative team from a rural high school in Western Canada that was seeking help in understanding the new cultural and linguistic realities of their school population. Their surrounding community had been essentially transformed by the construction of a meat-packing plant in the mid-1990s. With the plant employing principally newcomers to Canada, the ensuing demographic changes in the community were noticed very quickly within the confines of the local high school. The student body began to include a growing number of newcomer and second-generation students who were increasingly becoming part of the school’s population. (Newcomer students refers to immigrant or refugee students who have been in Canada for a short time, usually less than 5 years (NewYouth, 2019). Second-generation students include persons who were born in Canada and have at least one parent born outside Canada. These represent, for the most part, the children of immigrants (Statistics Canada, 2021).

The study took place in a rural high school in Western Canada, with approximately 35% of the students identifying as a visible minority, with 80% of this group being Black. Relationally, the student population as a whole was not cohesive. The killing of George Floyd in the United States had added fuel to already tense racial relations within diverse schools and communities (Coleman, 2022) around the world, and this school was no exception. Many of the newcomer students had begun to experience a variety of racial and prejudicial incidents in their school, and after hearing a student use the “N-word” in a class, several of them decided to begin self-advocating by expressing their concerns to the administrative team. Their conversations with the Vice Principal led to an understanding that a sustainable effort would be required in order to curb the divisiveness creeping into the school. After a few meetings together, they envisioned a plan to move forward, beginning with the formation of a Diversity Club. The club’s primary objective would be to increase racial and cultural literacy and awareness in the school community, and ultimately address some of the issues and challenges faced by newcomer students in the school and community.

The research team sought to explore how newcomer students’ path to success can often be rife with racism, microaggressions, and biases influenced by limited knowledge. As such, as one of its central foci, the study explored how using a multimodal advocacy tool could potentially develop students’racial literacy (Ruiz & Sealey-Ruiz, 2022) and provide hope and encouragement for these students. Research completed in this field (i.e., Allen, 2019; Epstein & Gist, 2015; Rogers & Mosley, 2006; Wills, 2019) suggests it is crucial to understand the role racial literacy and communication can play in helping newcomer and racialized students overcome challenges.

The overall project was divided into two phases, each dependent on the other. The first phase included focus group with newcomer students to identify the challenges they face in their new homeland. Through these focus group discussions, the researchers uncovered a variety of themes that revealed much about how culturally and linguistically diverse students continue to experience challenges related to their race, culture, language, and religion (Zaidi, Veroba, Morina, & Palmer, 2024). The second phase involved a student-led social media campaign as the researchers invited the student participants to create multimodal content, including advocacy posts for a collective social media account pertaining to immigrant and newcomer student narratives.

Through both phases, the researchers encouraged newcomer students to speak about the daily challenges they faced at school and empowered them by giving them the opportunity to advocate for social equity in their community. During the pointed focus group discussion with newcomer and second-generation student participants, social media, and public advocacy, the study also sought to look at the avenues for supporting school staff through education and transformative pedagogy initiatives. This helps the collective society to understand how it can do better to help newcomer and second-generation students become active and contributing members of their school and community. However, it is important to note that the discussion and findings for this paper are focused exclusively on the data gleaned from Phase II.

Relevant Literature

Despite increasing focus on immigration in educational research, most studies on integration primarily examine adult immigrants, leaving the experiences of immigrant and newcomer youth less explored (Francis & Yan, 2016; Scott, 2013; Yoshida & Amoyaw, 2020). Understanding the challenges faced by these students is essential, as they not only affect learning and integration but also serve as key factors contributing to wellbeing. A recent scoping review (Zaidi, Morina, & Palmer, 2024) further underscores this gap, highlighting the limited scholarship on newcomer and immigrant youth and the need to examine how their distinct challenges intersect with wellbeing to ensure that their voices inform research, practice, and advocacy. One dimension of this underexplored area is student advocacy, yet research often positions it as external to students rather than emerging from their own actions. For instance, Martin-Beltrán et al. (2020) found that within TESOL literature, advocacy is mostly portrayed as something teachers do for emergent bilingual or ESOL students, rather than something students do themselves (Dubetz & de Jong, 2011; Kayi-Aydar, 2015; Linville & Whiting, 2019; Yoon, 2008). Reviewing literature on daily schooling, Shelton et al. (2019) found that most research focuses on college communities and adult actors, with much less attention to K–12 settings. While many studies have explored how school communities foster partnerships or how educators support or hinder student community-building, few have seen high school students as independently active in forming, maintaining, and mobilizing their own communities. Even when high school students’ activism was studied, such as in historical analyses of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement or responses to school shootings (Sawchuk, 2019; Walsh, 2018), their participation was mostly shown as reactive to crises. Studies on school-based student advocacy (e.g., Preus et al., 2016; Oto & Chikkatur, 2019) typically highlighted efforts led or supported by teachers or organizations.

Our research project sought to address this gap by examining how immigrant and newcomer high school students understand and practice advocacy independently when empowered by their school. Grounded in the assumption that student-produced digital videos can serve as powerful tools for advocacy, this study draws on frameworks of racial literacy, digital literacy, and student activism. Through the analysis of one student’s video, we explore how their portrayal sheds light on the challenges and prejudices faced by newcomer students of color, and how such representations signal emerging forms of critical awareness and social engagement.

The idea of being racially literate has been conceptualized as a framework to help diminish racism within the education system, and enables individuals to uncover racial injustices, providing opportunities for understanding racial history and its influence on contemporary society (Chávez-Moreno, 2022). These aspects are crucial for addressing and improving injustices. Twine (2010) asserted that racial literacy encompasses several key elements: (1) including racism as a contemporary issue, rather than simply a historical one; (2) comprehending how encounters with racism intersect with factors such as class, gender, inequality, and heterosexuality; (3) recognizing the significance of whiteness in terms of its cultural and symbolic value; (4) acknowledging that racial identities are socially constructed and learned; (5) possessing the necessary language and concepts to be able to discuss race, racism, and antiracism; and (6) having the ability to interpret racial codes and practices. Racial literacy also includes having the ability to identify racism, understand it as it occurs, and utilize strategies to manage it. Familiarity and comfort with racial literacy also encompasses possessing the vocabulary necessary to discuss concepts such as race, racism, prejudice, ally, upstander, etc.

The present study helped identify the psychological harm that can occur when racial literacy is not a part of students’ education repertoires. Stevenson (2014) reinforced this notion, emphasizing the importance of education and guidance, especially as it pertains to teacher education. In this vein, it implies developing both pre- and in-service educators’ racial knowledge and literacy in order to avoid racist and prejudicial beliefs about their students (Sealey-Ruiz, 2011). Kia-Keating and Ellis (2007) and Wilkinson (2002) have also identified schools as playing an important role in the successful settlement of newcomer students. The interaction of teachers, peers, and curricula all combine to influence their students’ evolving narratives of self and identity, and it is within the classroom that a key site is established to construct social and cultural identity (Hoffman Clark, 2007, as cited in Geres, 2016).

To engage racial literacy initiatives and help students break down barriers traditional literacy may not allow them to do, Howell and Dyches (2022) promote a multimodal design. They suggest that the more educators provide opportunities for incorporating stories and narratives within social media, the more points of engagement they can experience with this type of participation (p. 102). In the quest for increased racial literacy among education stakeholders, Bucholtz et al. (2016), Enciso (2011), and Johnson and Vasudevan (2012) all emphasize the value of connecting social justice initiatives with storytelling and counter-storying using youth narratives. Other researchers (e.g., Bacon et al., 2019; Bell, 2010; Senehi et al., 2009; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001) also advocate incorporating student narratives into their education to critically speak out against social inequities, and also to espouse them as a social advocacy tool for the equal distribution of resources, opportunities, and privileges. Geres’ (2016) scholarship also found that newcomer high school students in Canada, when given adequate opportunities and support, can use storytelling and narratives to help (re)construct and negotiate their identities, experience improved emotional well-being, and actively work to promote social change.

Added to these initiatives, the use of a multimodal platform such as digital technology, and linking it to a social justice theme (Hughes, 2013) provides the opportunity to transform the classroom. Hughes (2013) acknowledges the strategic importance of students being able to express their identity through creative images that move beyond the literal as she states that “[i]t is not a simple task to join visual images to words. It requires that the creator possess a new or different set of skills, including visual artistry and imagination” (Hughes, 2013, p. 173). In another, related, study, Hughes (2017) worked with at-risk students through an inquiry-based model to create digital media to facilitate self-directed learning and develop perseverance and self-confidence. Gleason and von Gillern (2018) espoused using social media for democratic practices. Their focus was digital citizenship as they demonstrated how traditional citizenship education and extracurricular activities aimed at civic engagement can be integrated through social media. They also advocated for the use of social media to inform educators, community members, practitioners, and parents to help them become more civically engaged. Doerr-Stevens and Buckley-Marudas (2019) used research to discover how having students create radio shows to focus on racial disparities was an effective means to better understanding themselves and their racialized peers. They employed multimodal, sound-based data as they explored how high school students could harness elements of sound and music to garner multicultural learning while engaging in collaborative research and radio podcasting. O’Byrne (2019) also explored the use of digital media to permit youth to have discussions in which they can engage and “restory societal power structures for the purpose of personal and social transformation” (p. 659). This digital platform gave them opportunities to engage in difficult social justice discussions, which, conceivably, they may never have participated in outside the digital platform. It also provided opportunities for educators to engage in education, empowerment, and advocacy, especially for racialized youth.

Student advocacy also played an important role in the current research, and scholars such as Beacham and Shambaugh (2007) clarified this concept through their explanation of it as a practice “in which one or more individuals actively work toward the betterment of people” (p. 316). Other scholars such as Reid (2000) suggest that advocacy also spans a wide variety of activities, from attempting to sway public opinion to lobbying for public policy initiatives. Linville and Whiting (2019) further defined advocacy as “taking appropriate actions on English learners (EL) behalf” (p. 44). (An English learner can be defined as students whose first language is not English and they need additional language support to succeed academically) (Government of Alberta, 2022). The researchers in this study, however, focused on how students can take action on their own behalf and become advocates for themselves and their racialized and EL peers. In the current study, the researchers shed light on how students and adults conceive student narratives as tools for advocacy and, consequently, position themselves as advocates. They conceptualized examples of advocacy as practices in which students were able to use their voices and multimodal stories to call for change in public opinion and public policies concerning newcomers.

Methods and Analysis

Through this collaborative action research, a two-phase initiative, the researchers initiated a series of focus groups designed to boost the level of racial literacy in the school by delineating some of the specific challenges and issues that the school’s newcomer students were encountering at their school. As researchers engaged in a collaborative action research project, our role was not that of distant observers but of co-inquirers working alongside participants to create a space where their voices, perspectives, and interpretations of their own experiences as immigrants were foregrounded.

A total of 22 visible minority students from the school, divided into 5 groups based on demographic similarities, participated in the study. Half of the participants were born in Canada to visible minority immigrant parents, while the other half consisted of newcomer students from various countries. As the project took place in a high school, at the time of the study, 68% of the students were in twelfth grade, while 32% were in eleventh grade.

Student participants were given the opportunity to discuss their role as immigrants to Canada and, in an honest display of words and emotion, talked about the added stress and expectations that their language, race, culture, and religion placed on them both in school and within their community. From these focus groups emerged a number of themes which were then used as the platform from which the second phase (and the focus of the current study) was conducted.

This process set the research team on the path to empowering the student participants by providing an opportunity to advocate for themselves and others through a collective social media account, thereby providing the foundation for the present study. The second phase (the focus of the current study and this paper) involved the collection of multimodal materials and several informal conversations with the vice principal of the school. More specifically, after the initial focus group sessions took place in Phase 1, participating students were invited to continue on to the second phase of the project. This phase involved developing the themes identified during the focus groups, and an advocacy for change initiative that was conceptualized through a social media campaign. This phase also consisted of three workshops, which were held in person (at the school) with some members of the research team joining online. All initiatives were undertaken on an extracurricular and volunteer basis with instruction provided by the research team.

During the first workshop, students picked their themes, formed working groups, and generated ideas for stories or content to be shared. Following this, students began to work on their projects independently. The second and third workshops were organized with students who collaborated with the social media project manager on sharing strategies, such as posting the schedule and hashtags. More specifically, participants were asked to organize themselves into groups and were provided with some of the identified recurring themes that had surfaced from the focus groups in Phase 1.

The themes that emerged from the initial focus groups provided the fodder to develop the multimodal content for the Phase 2 advocacy groups. The extracted themes included: a) recognition and awareness about religion and culture, b) fear of backlash from culture and religious events, c) experiencing and dealing with racism, d) involvement and connection to the school, and e) pressure to perform (Zaidi et al., 2024). These themes were used by the students to further develop several forms of engagement including social media posts, video development through role-playing, and dramatization depicting real-life experiences of these students. The student participants formed their groups based on their theme selection and were encouraged to bring forth ideas that spoke to their own personal experiences to create the narratives of their digital stories. For the purposes of the present study, the researchers considered digital stories a form of storytelling that utilizes technology and digital media (including multimedia elements like images, videos, audio recordings, text, and music) to convey personal experiences.

While the groups worked independently in the creation of their digital stories, they nonetheless collaborated closely with a social media expert who had been hired externally by the school to work on this aspect of the project. He was able to work with the students to create strategies for a bigger and more influential outreach. These included experimenting with websites where they could schedule social media posts, providing them with a list of popular hashtags for their selected platforms, and encouraging them to read articles for additional information on how to expand their message reach. After the digital materials had been published, the researchers conducted a focus group with the participating students in the second phase, where they were asked about their motivation to participate and their experiences of sharing their created materials with the public.

Data Analysis

One exemplary project depicting a unique narrative of racialized newcomer students was selected for the multimodal analysis. Specifically, the project, a short film titled “Breaking the Cycle,” told the story of a young racialized Muslim female student arriving at a Canadian high school for the first time. The project was analyzed using Rose’s (2023) four sites and three modalities for interpreting the meaning of visual materials. These sites include the sites of production, image, circulation, and audience, and three modalities (technological, compositional, and social). The Site of Production involves considering the context, intentions of the creator, and social influences shaping the image creation. The Site of Image analyzes composition, symbols, and visual elements to understand meaning. The Site of Circulation considers how an image moves from one site to another. The Site of Audience explores how viewers interpret images based on their social and cultural contexts. Together, these four sites create a framework for studying visual materials in different contexts, and the design helped the researchers in this study to do a thorough analysis of the participants’ digital narratives.

A post-project focus group was organized after the interpretation and analysis of the students’ digital artifacts were completed. The creators of the selected digital materials explained the meaning of the message they had sought to deliver. In addition to the digital stories, informal conversations with the school’s vice principal took place throughout the entire data analysis to aid in portraying the experiences of newcomer and second-generation Canadian students, and further understand how the opportunity to advocate for themselves using a collective social media account empowers newcomer students and influences their activity.

To further understand how the social media campaign influenced the creativity of newcomer students in advocating for themselves and transforming educational spaces in multicultural secondary schools, the researchers used the evaluative framework for student voice work in schools by Rose and Wood (2016) to discuss the findings from the video analysis. This evaluative framework was derived from the authors’ systematic review, which sought to identify gaps and provide recommendations for practice in the field of student voice. A more in-depth description of the framework is integrated in the discussion section.

To ensure data validity, Lincoln et al. (1985) suggested the criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Since credibility concerns the alignment of findings with reality (Stahl & King, 2020), we employed techniques such as prolonged engagement in the field, cross-member checking, and data triangulation to enhance credibility. Specifically, the study took place throughout one academic year, during which we conducted a series of focus groups, social media campaign workshops, and informal discussion sessions with students at the end of the project. For phase two of the study, which is the focus here, informal discussions at the end of the project added an extra layer of credibility. Regarding transferability, the degree to which findings can be applied or transferred to different contexts, we provide a detailed description of the context so that readers can see how the experiences of newcomer students might be relevant to their own settings. As for dependability, which refers to a thorough description of the study’s methodology, we offer a clear overview of the entire project’s methods, not just those of the second phase. Finally, we ensured confirmability—that interpretations, especially those of the video data, are grounded in data rather than researcher bias—by employing data triangulation. This involved using multiple data collection methods and sources. In phase two specifically, we used method triangulation by incorporating both students’ projects and their narratives from the end-of-project discussions.

Results

The students who chose to participate in the current study were highly motivated to lead and seek change by raising awareness within the school through the creation of digital content. Sally, one of the participants representing second-generation students from China, expanded on this by commenting:

What was exciting for me is that there’s a bigger outreach than what I could do on my

own . . .This social media advocacy campaign was more school-wide, and [then it turned

that] even some [other] schools in . . . [the sorrounding area] started to follow.

Despite the positive initial reception, however, and regardless of their motivation to lead and seek change, many of the student participants admitted that they initially had mixed feelings about participating in this phase because of the role peer pressure might take or what other students’ reactions might be. A quote from student participant, Nikki, a second-generation student from Congo, revealed:

I was feeling excited, but also a little bit nervous as to what people like students in the

school would think . . . if they’d be like, “oh, this is not… you shouldn't be doing this,” or

whatever. I was just feeling a little bit nervous, but excited at the same time, because I

knew it was going to be something good.

Although students opened collective social media accounts, they primarily used Instagram to express themselves. Their posts tended to fall into one of two categories: 1) diversity and cultural awareness, and 2) leadership and advocacy.

Posts pertaining to diversity and cultural awareness included two still images and three videos. Still images included pictures of some of the students who attended a cultural event that was organized at the school, and depicted students wearing traditional clothes from their cultures with the description “We celebrate our differences and come together as one.” Other still images included pictures of some of the slides that a student had created in an attempt to define culture and awareness. Two of the videos underscoring diversity and cultural awareness displayed traditional food preparation, one showing the traditional Cantonese preparation of candied pomelo peel, and the other showing the process of making East African fried mandazi. An additional video focused on a group of students wishing everyone greetings for Ramadan.

Other posts shared on the collective social media account focused mainly on leadership and advocacy for cultural awareness as well as social equity. For instance, in one of the posts, students shared a video from the World Youth Forum and added a caption, “What makes us special is our differences in color, shapes, beliefs, and where we are from, but that is supposed to make us united because it is what we share in common.” Students in charge of the collective social media accounts also shared a portion of a short film, “Breaking the Cycle,” which was scripted and produced by one of the participants, and showcased the experiences of a racialized female newcomer student in a rural area of Western Canada.

In another post related to leadership and advocacy, students shared behind-the-scenes photos of themselves and staff being interviewed by CBC Calgary. The interview focused on the initiative the students’ school had taken regarding the allowance of placing Ramadan on the 2023 to 2024 school calendar, thereby marking it as a recognized holiday for Muslim students. In a further post, they shared pictures of the student participants taken at the “Building Belonging through Student Leadership” conference, a student leadership conference organized by the Student and Staff Council with a specific emphasis on EDI. Here, the students delivered a PowerPoint presentation, inspired by the discussions that had taken place during the Phase I focus group meetings. Along with the pictures, students added the caption “Be the change you want to see. Lead by example and inspire the younger generations.”

Exemplary Post Analysis

The researchers maintain that the value of critical pedagogy does not come to an end with theory, but rather focuses on praxis, or translating knowledge into action. In terms of critical pedagogy, education is perceived as a means to achieve empowerment, and a locality where learners can come to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for dismantling oppressive structures and to achieve liberation (Freire, 2000; Tewell, 2015). Unlike the traditional “banking” model of education, that positions learners as passive recipients of information in a classroom guided by critical pedagogy, learners engage with problems that are personally meaningful and are active agents in their own education. Through this, they gain the vital confidence needed to become agents of change in the world beyond their classroom (Elmborg, 2006; Freire, 2000; Tewell, 2015). The current study made use of a short film titled “Breaking the Cycle,” which was created by student participants in response to one of the challenges newcomer students face in their new homeland. The project was analyzed using Rose’s (2023) four sites for interpreting the meaning of visual materials to understand how this admin-supported initiative to embrace student voices enhances newcomer students’ creativity.

Video production “Breaking the Cycle”

The Site of Production

The short (4:59 min) film “Breaking the Cycle” took slightly over 1 month to create (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aTqsGGt7a0). The video depicts the story of Abhitha, a young, female, racialized, Somali, Muslim student coming to a Canadian high school for the first time. The film was shot at the actual school where the story unfolds, featuring actual newcomer and immigrant students as part of the cast.

The process began with script writing, including not only the lines for the actors/actresses, but also details about their thoughts and feelings, as well as details about the scene, wardrobe, and music. (It is noteworthy to mention that, given the sensitive message the students were trying to convey, it was difficult for the videographers to recruit actors who were accurately depicted in terms of their race or culture (e.g., A student wearing a hijab herself also plays the role of a student who is laughing at a Muslim student. When asked, the videographer explained that she needed “actors” and this particular student had volunteered to play that role).

The video-creator, Alliyah, was a racialized second-generation Filipina student, and, for the record, did not identify as Muslim. Asked about why she chose this particular story to advocate for equality, she responded, “I’m not Muslim, but since it kind of hits the majority of the people in our school, I just want to show the struggles and all that they’ve been in.” Advocating for a demographic to which she does not belong is a clear sign of empathy, and, elaborating further, she mentioned that she connected these feelings of empathy with her previous experiences:

I wanted to share my experience of what I’ve been through. And so upon sharing the video, you learn that so many people also experience the same thing, which kind of represents how much immigrants are kind of like, you know, treated a bit differently.

While the short-film showcased the struggles of newcomer and immigrant students, the video-creator said that the goal she had in mind for the audience was “. . . to make them feel like they’re not alone in this … that we’re all going to the same thing that we just need to connect to each other and help each other out.” She further went on to explain that she wanted the video to be encouraging for the audience:

I want them to connect to the last part, where it’s like keeping your head high, no matter the obstacles you go through. “Cause like at the very end . . . there’s hope for the other new students. She’s [referring to Abhitha] able to teach and be like, oh, like yeah, like don’t worry about this and all that.”

The Site of Image

The film used in the current study helped convey the full message of its backstory, and there was a strong connection between the captions, visual elements, and music. These were all particularly useful in making it easier for linguistically diverse students to understand and connect with the material. However, the facial expressions and gestures of the characters provided a more complete picture of the storyline, creating the opportunity to fully appreciate it through an analysis of individual images within the video.

At the beginning of the video, Abhitha entered the school in high spirits with the script depicting Abhitha in a soliloquy, telling herself, “You’ll be alright,” as she entered the school smiling. However, as the video progressed, it portrayed her being ostracized and berated by her classmates and teachers for being “different” which, she ultimately admitted, had affected her mental health and sense of belonging. As an example, in the first scene, she tried to connect with other students by asking them politely, “Hi. Know teacher?” whereupon the students showed little interest in either helping her or having any contact with her, responding, “What? I don’t understand what you are saying.” In the footage following, after eventually locating her classroom, the teacher rushed through introducing her, telling her that spending a few moments to introduce her to the class was “a waste of class time.”

Figure 1(a) depicted Abhitha’s feeling of joy before entering the school for the first time. This speaks to the notion that, although newcomer students may feel insecure about joining a new school, they generally enter the school with positive attitudes and thoughts. It is the experiences they encounter and their reactions to them once they become a part of day-to-day school life, that often affect their morale. Similarly, Figure 1(b) depicted other students looking at Abhitha from head to toe, especially taking note of the different type of clothing she was wearing, and berating her for her halting English, thereby provoking feelings of inferiority and rejection.

Figure 1.

Figures 1(a) and 1(b) are screenshots from Breaking the cycle – short film (Delena, 2024).

Abhitha’s narrative illustrated her continuing stress in Figure 2(a), when she entered the classroom for the first time, and several students, noticing her way of dressing and her skin colour, reacted to her by throwing paper at her. Later on in the video, as Abhitha was leaving the classroom to pray, her fellow students began mocking her, pointing and videoing her prayer practice and the ensuing events (Figure 2(b)).

Figure 2.

Figures 2(a) and 2(b) are screenshots from Breaking the cycle – short film (Delena, 2024).

Portrayed sometime afterwards in the cafeteria, Abhitha noticed several students staring at her because of the choice of food she brought for lunch; food that was representative of her culture that is presumably unfamiliar in the Western context. As a result, she attempted to conceal what she was eating (Figure 3). Further on in the video, we see how Abhitha carefully observed what other students were eating, and the following day, in an attempt to feel a stronger sense of belonging and connection to her new school, she returned to school with a Western-inspired lunch consisting of a sandwich and a Capri-Sun beverage.

Figure 3.

Figure 3 is a screenshot from Breaking the cycle – short film (Delena, 2024).

The video showcased how Abhitha’s experiences at her new school had both the power and potential to disrupt the motivation and courage she initially possessed. This was particularly evident in scene two, which depicted a distressed and crying Abhitha running into the washroom as her monologue expressed, “This was supposed to be a fresh start into a new country, but why am I changing myself into someone I am not?” The video clearly evoked and reflected the internal conflict and the juxtaposition of wanting to honour one’s own culture and identity, while bowing to the pressure of desiring to connect with others and feel part of the community in one’s new home.

The video very effectively pointed out that being an immigrant is not only challenging because of language and religious barriers, but it can also be a lonely existence. Even when in distress and seeing that these interactions had a significant impact on her mental health, and even as she cried by herself in the bathroom, Abhitha continued a more or less solitary existence at school, with little to no interaction between her and other students.

Nevertheless, in spite of her reticence to be a mainstream player within her school culture, as the video continued, it became clear that Abhitha’s attitude toward her situation was evolving, that her sense of resilience, and that of immigrant youth, would prevail. Abitha recognized that, although she was unlikely to be accepted fully into the dominant culture, if she continued to fully maintain her newcomer identity and the culture she represented as an individual, she still had the power to do something.

The ensuing scene portrayed Abhitha in an internal monologue while looking in the mirror: “My name is fearless and courageous, and I should live up to it and not let anyone get into my head.” The video pointed out that, rather than depending on the support of classmates, students, or teachers, which is often non-existent in their minds, Abitha had showcased the power of holding up one’s culture and name as a means to help alleviate the stress of being a newcomer. The dramatization also touched upon the tension and coping mechanisms used by students to affirm their identity, and the need to receive that affirmation through the surrounding environment as well. In essence, the video represented a call for help from the students.

Following in this vein, the final scene depicted another racialized Muslim female student entering the classroom, conceivably on the verge of encountering similar issues to Abhitha. However, at this point in the video, Abitha gave the new student a comforting smile with a voiceover stating, “It may have been an obstacle for me, but others can use it as an advantage to break the cycle.” This part of the video was particularly significant because, although Abhitha had felt alone in her plight, she recognized that it was not a healthy way to live, and she wanted to be certain that new students like herself learn to mitigate similar feelings. According to her, the cycle needed to be broken. By sharing this video, the students underscored the power of resilience in the face of adversity and the need to create awareness through a constructive dialogue that improves the educational experiences of other newcomer students.

The Site of Circulation

The video “Breaking the Cycle” has been circulating on two social media platforms: YouTube and Instagram, since February 2022, thereby enabling different audiences to be reached within different contexts on each platform. YouTube, for example, is known for more in-depth content, and its audience can expect a greater amount of detail in the narrative. The platform is often used in educational contexts, including classrooms and conference sessions, compelling audiences to watch a video with a mindset that allows longer viewing sessions and a more immersive experience. On the other hand, while Instagram’s audience is more diverse, the platform is characterized by quick-scrolling content and, therefore, demands concise and visually captivating videos. An audience viewing through this medium may be seeking more instant engagement and immediate impact, requiring less of an attention span than a YouTube video. Of note, Breaking the Cycle shared the same video format on both platforms.

Rose explains how “many of [these] online platforms . . . have their own, internal processes which shape how [the content] is shared” (p. 58), and include algorithms that “are particularly important in the creation of search results” (p. 59). The algorithms on YouTube suggest the video to users based on their search, viewing history, and engagement patterns, and its visibility in the search results also depends on its title, description, and tags. Conversely, the algorithms on Instagram prioritize users’ engagement and interaction after posting, meaning that the content’s likes, comments, and interaction after posting greatly enhance its visibility.

YouTube does not show the number of search results; however, if one were to type in the title “Breaking the Cycle,” for example, with no filters, there would be a considerable number of videos that would occur, an indicator that interaction and engagement are equally important on YouTube. The “Breaking the Cycle” video has currently reached 225 views, 8 likes, and 2 comments on YouTube, whereas on Instagram, the same video has reached 671 views, 97 likes, and 1 comment. Looking further into the viewer demographic, YouTube analytics show that 55.5% of the viewers watched the video in the same year that it was released (2022), while 34.4% watched it in 2023. To date in 2024, approximately 10% of the viewers have watched the film.

While all of the viewers are from Canada, only 15% are from the city in which the film was produced, whereas the location of the other viewers was not available. The YouTube viewer demographics also showed that 57.5% of the viewers watched the video through a computer, 41.2% through a mobile device, 0.9% through a tablet, and 0.4% through a television screen. The Instagram insights, on the other hand, are not available because the video is shared on a collective account, the latter is not a business account.

The Site of Audience

Based on Rose’s (2023) description, the compositionality of an image has an effect on the spectator who views it, and, therefore, this becomes an important element to consider when analyzing an image. In the video “Breaking the Cycle,” there were visual elements that added to the complexity of its message. For instance, in the post-project interview, the video creator remarked:

I had this whole plan in my head when in the beginning, [Abhitha] wears bright colors to

show her personality and how happy she is, and then, as progressively she gets to experience stuff like the bullying and all that, her outfits get darker.

This is distinctly evident in Figure 4(a). Abhitha entered the washroom and began to cry. The dark gown that she was wearing in this scene, coupled with the dim environment of the bathroom itself, helped to construct a complete picture of the feelings she was experiencing. However, after she took control of herself through a self-empowering monologue, the video portrayed her walking down the hallway with her head held high, a smiling face, and wearing brighter colors again, even though, in the background, there were students who continued staring at her (Figure 4(b)).

Figure 4.

Figures 4(a) and 4(b) are screenshots from Breaking the cycle – short film (Delena, 2024).

The video made effective use of sound and music, in that not only could the audience hear the mocking laughter of students when they saw Abhitha praying, but the intensity of Abhitha’s sobs could also be heard, as she cried alone in the bathroom. Some of the scenes were accompanied by instrumental music, as seen at the onset of the video. Here, the video creator chose to use the instrumental piece known as “Childhood” by Scott Buckley, described by the creator as cinematic and bright, before the main character had endured the negative experiences of her first days of school as a newcomer. The song “It’s Okay” by Firefl!es, on the other hand, is described as cinematic and calm, and was played in the scenes in which Abhitha displayed resilience, similar to how a rainbow is often seen after a storm. When asked about these instrumental music choices, the video creator commented, “ . . . Especially in the beginning, I just wanted to give the audience a feeling of or like ‘Look at her. She’s so happy,’ And then, as the music cuts off, it’s just her being in the real world.”

Rose also states that the social context of the audience, which can include demographic, cultural, and socio-economic challenges, controls how the video is perceived. To illustrate, “Breaking the Cycle” was created to empower other newcomer students by ensuring they are not alone in the process of resettling. Nevertheless, the question remains as to the impact of this video on someone who, for example, was not a racialized newcomer. Additionally, while the video addresses the experiences of current newcomer students, it would also be valuable to consider whether the video is impactful enough to prepare those students who are in the process of relocating to a new country. The researchers’ intention was to help, and not create additional stress or anxiety for potential newcomers.

The project, including the film “Breaking the Cycle,” which exposes the challenges that racialized newcomer and immigrant students face, was initially shared at a few local, national, and even international conferences, eventually drawing the interest of a local TV station. This station conducted interviews with students from racialized Muslim backgrounds featured in the project, giving them the opportunity to share their cultural needs. As a result, the school district recognized the importance of supporting their cultural heritage by granting them a day off for Eid, fostering a sense of inclusivity and respect for cultural diversity.

Discussion

The current study has given a new voice to newcomer student participants. This manuscript sought to understand how an admin-supported social media campaign could influence the creativity of newcomer students to such an extent that they would advocate for themselves and transform educational spaces in multicultural secondary schools.

The exemplary advocacy video, which was used in this study, brings to life several themes in the literature on migration, exclusion, and the limits of assimilation. It features a Muslim high school female student who, from her first day at school, faces subtle and overt forms of exclusion based on her accent, race, and culture. Her initial response, attempting to assimilate, mirrors what Ari (2019) and Khan et al. (2018) describe: immigrant students who, despite being willing to adapt culturally, still experience exclusion due to racialized perceptions and accented language. This reflects the way assimilation, rather than promoting belonging, can actually further reinforce exclusion for those who do not fit the dominant “white, Western, Anglo-Saxon” ideal often associated with Canadian identity (Ari, 2019, p. 74). Furthermore, as Creese et al. (2011) found, some immigrant youth, particularly Black immigrants, experience pressure not simply to integrate but to adopt racialized identities (e.g., “learning to be Black”) that align with settled community expectations. The student’s attempt to change herself to fit in, followed by her gradual reflection and self-acceptance, illustrates the emotional toll of such pressures.

The student’s narrative also gives form to critiques in the literature regarding the one-dimensional framing of integration. As Shields and Lujan (2019) argue, public discourse often positions integration as the responsibility of immigrants alone, promoting the idea that failure to integrate lies with them rather than recognizing the relational nature of the process (p. 12). The student’s isolation and struggle with identity show how this one-sided expectation overlooks the role of the settled community in adapting and fostering genuine inclusion (Rossiter et al., 2015). Her eventual turn toward self-acceptance not only resists these dominant pressures but also signals the kind of critical awareness and agency that researchers such as Yoon (2008) and Kayi-Aydar (2015) identify as central to youth advocacy and racial literacy. In this way, the video powerfully illustrates how immigrant students of color navigate, resist, and reinterpret dominant narratives of belonging, revealing the limitations of current integration discourses and the transformative potential of youth voice.

To further interrogate how student voice operated within this project, beyond individual narratives of struggle and self-acceptance, we used an evaluative framework borrowed from Pearce and Wood (2016). The model outlines five interrelated features of transformative voice work: dialogic, intergenerational, collective/ inclusive, and transgressive. These dimensions provided an analytical lens to examine the depth and potential of the advocacy expressed in the student-produced video and the broader project. By engaging this framework, we were able to assess the extent to which the project moved beyond surface-level participation and toward more radical, equity-oriented forms of youth engagement and community-building.

As the first element of the framework suggests, student work initiatives must be dialogic to involve “speaking with, rather than speaking for others” (Fielding, 2004). In this particular project, participating students in focus groups shared the challenges they faced as newcomers with the research team. They also sought to liaise with the community as they created digital responses to advocate for themselves. By sharing the video “Breaking the Cycle” on social media platforms, students also sought to share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with their broader community. Participating in the conferences, as well as being interviewed and negotiating to have a day off for Eid, also portrays the presence of the dialogic element of the initiative.

The second element of the framework suggests that the relationships in student voice initiatives should be intergenerational. In particular, research suggests that adults should acknowledge that, while young people are fully capable of speaking up for themselves, adults continue to bear the responsibility of creating a suitable environment that enables young people’s voices to be heard (Pearce & Wood, 2016). This can be accomplished through innovative methods such as photography, role play, storytelling, or other ways to voice their opinions (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008), which typically comply with young people’s competencies (Lundy, 2007; Marchant & Kirby, 2005; Piper & Frankham, 2007). In this regard, the research team witnessed how the admin-supported initiative offered a unique opportunity for students to share moments connected to their awareness of race, culture, language, and religion. Moreover, in the second phase, students worked with a social media expert, co-developing their outreach strategy.

The video Breaking the Cycle pushed the students to expand their own racial and religious literacy development, and recognized that those with whom they interact on a daily basis (in this case, peers, teachers, and administrators) often lack personal racial awareness and are undoubtedly only beginning their own journey toward racial literacy (Ruiz & Sealey-Ruiz, 2022).

The third element of the evaluative framework focuses on the collective/inclusive nature of student work initiatives. However, research suggests that this may lead to a “dividing practice” that excludes students “whose voices are silenced because … they don’t fit the dominant discourse and academic aspirations of their schools” (McIntyre et al., 2005, p. 155). This can be attributed to their minority status, the difficulty in being understood, suppression of their voices both in and outside of school, either by choice or by coercive forces, or because their manner of speaking is perceived as aggressive, confrontational, or impolite (Cook-Sather, 2014; MacBeath, 2006; Taylor & Robinson, 2009). Given these arguments, significant challenges remain in ensuring the inclusion of students whose voices are often marginalized and in providing newcomer and immigrant students with more opportunities to speak freely. Therefore, the present study is dedicated to emphasizing the importance of creating inclusive opportunities for these students’ narratives to be heard.

The fourth and final element in the evaluative framework for student work initiatives involves transgression, which suggests that “in order to succeed, student voice initiatives must be willing to affect real change and to cross or transgress traditional borders and power relations” (Pearce & Wood, 2016, pp. 19–20). In effect, the study, and in particular the social media campaign (including the film “Breaking the Cycle”), helped to initiate a positive reaction for change. Firstly, incorporating this type of design-oriented, multimodal understanding of issues that had been identified in the school resulted in an opportunity for student participants to voice their deepest concerns, feelings, and honest strategies for change. The multimodal format also allowed for an increased use of virtual space, blended media, and new communicative patterns that all led to a broader understanding of the issues, the transformational and interactive processes, and the roles culture and agency play in properly and effectively representing newcomer students (Kress & Selander, 2012).

The manner in which student participants presented themselves succeeded in provoking a deeper understanding of the two research questions that had precipitated this study. These initiatives, in the form of narratives and storytelling, enabled participating students to showcase their perspectives to advocate for change, and, with the strong support and help from the administration at this school, the student participants succeeded in pushing their passion for change, both among their fellow students, and within the education system, where racism and discrimination continue to be perpetuated.

It is important to note, however, that this study is limited by its focus on a single student-produced video created during a student-led advocacy campaign. While this allowed for a deep, contextualized analysis of how students articulate their experiences through multimodal storytelling, the findings reflect the perspectives and positionalities of a specific group of immigrant and newcomer students, primarily racialized and Muslim. As such, the video does not capture the full diversity of newcomer experiences, including those of students who may not share these demographic characteristics but nonetheless encounter significant barriers in schooling. Therefore, the choice to focus on a single artifact limits the breadth of voices and viewpoints included in the study.

Implications and Conclusion

The project began when the administrative team of a rural high school in Western Canada contacted the principal investigator for support in understanding the new cultural and linguistic realities of their increasingly diverse student population. This initial collaboration laid the foundation for a long-term partnership between the research team and the school leadership. Together, we organized student focus groups and conducted social media advocacy workshops aimed at helping newcomer and immigrant students identify challenges and develop their own advocacy initiatives to amplify their voices. Therefore, this study represented a transformational experience for both the student participant group and the school’s administration. Using a platform of student-created multimodal presentations gave participants the opportunity to heighten their awareness and understanding of the power of self-advocacy and to discuss racial literacy in affirming and organic ways.

The analysis of the short film “Breaking the Cycle” through Rose’s (2023) sites of image, production, circulation, and audience gave the researchers a clearer picture of what had occurred with the student portrayed in the film. It helped bring clarity to her emotions, reflections, and attitude toward her newcomer experience, and gave the researchers the opportunity to disseminate the knowledge they had gained through this visual experiment. Further, engaging with personal narratives helped advance awareness around racism and social justice, and provided a springboard for the students to develop their individual ideas. The study also allowed them to reach out to their peers in an effort to educate and talk about what this topic meant to them personally and collectively. The topic was not an easy one to discuss, and depicted students who had been hurt by others’ microaggressions and racist attitudes.

As Darvin and Norton (2018) suggest, multimodal practices contribute to learners’ talents as well as affirm their identities. The student participants were able to embrace their creative, filming, and editing talents and, through the short film they produced, were able to affirm their identities and advance conversation around the challenges that they as newcomer and second-generation students often face. Consistent with Curwood and Jones’ (2022) arguments, the student participants aimed to either help others understand that they are not alone, or encouraged others to take a stance and challenge injustice through their own counter-narratives.

Given these results, the research highlights the importance of encouraging students to advocate for themselves and their community. It also sheds light on how marginalized newcomer and second-generation high school students, together with social media, can utilize their critical literacy to become change agents and advocates for social equity. The outcomes foreground a major implication of this scholarship as research moves forward, and additional data will help identify the specific elements that drive the increased feelings of integration - information that would likely spur increased administrative or community support for long-term system change. In addition, further research will be able to use similar data to link other studies, and then use this scholarship to further develop the notions of racial literacy and student advocacy.

Incorporating administrative support into such scholarship helps build on already existing work that helps to increase understanding into how educational systems can change and evolve. Arar (2020) suggests that, as school leaders have a substantial impact on students and their life (Brooks & Watson, 2019), leaders’ sense-making of their values and beliefs and exercising discretion (DeMatthews, 2015) becomes imperative. It also implies that continuously evaluating their actions and approaches can lead to positive and effective change, both in teacher education programs and in the classroom (DeMatthews, 2018; Khalifa et al., 2019; Lopez, 2016).

The data from this study provides an excellent example of how to address a problem from the students’ perspective and use this data to promote a shift in the system itself. Including school administrations in applying strategies in their everyday pedagogies can also help encourage student advocacy from within to achieve social justice. The project provides hope for 1.5 and second-generation racialized students, or future students with an immigration background, as well as culturally and linguistically diverse students, and the themes brought out in the video and PowerPoint mutually support this awareness campaign. Supporting racial literacy as a catalyst inspires effective professional development and a call to action within the education system. This means encouraging educators to carefully examine their biases towards their students and create environments within their classrooms that encourage student advocacy and cross-collaboration with each other (Ruiz & Sealey-Ruiz, 2022).

Creating spaces for racial literacy to be examined and discussed is an important first step. It is important for students to be able to take the lead in sharing narratives and stories that reveal their perspectives on racism and social justice. Examining the potential of racial literacy helps us stay informed about the moral, political, and cultural decisions teachers need to make, and how they, as a group, can become catalysts for change, spreading the word to their students and encouraging them to take action as well. This could create an awareness of how to recognize social injustice in their school settings and, by doing so, they can then come to realize the impact of words and actions and use them to provoke a more universal sense of social justice within our education system and the global structure itself.