Theme 2.2: Social Pedagogical Tools to Promote Critical Digital Literacy

Choosing or Refusing the Machine: Investigating Young People's Creative Practices with Generative Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Castro's SSHRC-funded research program has investigated how young people develop creative practices through digital visual learning networks. That work, conducted with research partners in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, is published in Navigating the Online Networks of Young Creators: An Investigation of Digital Visual Learning (co-edited with Dr. Joanna Black, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

The current project (2026–2029) extends that research by examining how young people take up, adapt, or resist generative AI image tools as they create and circulate artwork within their digital networks. Using digital ethnography across classrooms, community programs, and online platforms, the study traces how young people navigate questions of authorship, originality, ethics, and creative decision-making in relation to generative AI. Rather than asking whether young people use these tools, the research asks how they use them, what they refuse, and what those choices reveal about learning, teaching, and agency in art education.

Findings will inform art educators and policymakers on how to address generative AI in ways that center student agency, ethics, and creative learning.

Researcher: Juan Carlos Castro

Director and Founder of the Canadian Practitioners Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Violent Extremism (CPN-PREV, funded by Public Safety Canada)

This evidence-based network aims to address violent radicalization in Canada by recommending and highlighting effective practices in a variety of fields and by creating a community of experts from a variety of practical backgrounds. This is done through systematic reviews that include mapping available services in Canada to determine what practices are effective and why, as well as organizing projects and events that strengthen connections between members of communities of practice from all backgrounds (e.g., community work, education, social work, law enforcement, etc.). Thus, education is at the heart of its mission, which is defined by a goal of ongoing personal and professional development for all those working in a practical way to prevent radicalization, based on their experience and research.

This training is not limited to communities of practice, c also generates accessible content such as videos, posters and newsletters for the general public. In addition, the CPN-PREV team works with members of the student community who are not yet in the field to connect them with different people from the fields of research, practice, and policy to help them develop and share their own ideas. In addition, the tools and field knowledge that Ghayda Hassan develops and organizes through this network are added as contributions to the UNESCO-PREV Chair, of which she is a co-holder with Vivek Venkatesh, David Morin and Marie-Ève Carignan, also members of the CSLP.

Researcher: Ghayda Hassan

Equity-oriented pedagogy in Creative Arts Therapies (CATS) education

Annabelle Brault’s research program explores how participatory arts practices, particularly musicking, can foster well-being, community resilience, and capacity for change.

In her recent publication, The Role of Pluralism in Fostering an Ethic of Social Justice: Policy Recommendations for Music Therapy Education and Training, Annabelle Brault, together with Cynthia Bruce and Vivek Venkatesh, argue that music therapy programs in Canada should intentionally include dissension in their curriculum to help students meet professional standards and social justice principles. They also emphasize the importance of valuing diverse perspectives, lived knowledge, and arts-based approaches in socially just music therapy education.  

Researcher: Annabelle Brault

Intersections of the arts, digital culture, and social change

Annabelle Brault’s SSHRC-funded doctoral arts-based research examines how group musicking shapes perceptions of digital well-being for post-secondary students. Annabelle Brault also co-founded BANAL with José Cortés, Veronica Mockler, Léah Snider, and Vivek Venkatesh, an art collective that works with music, images, and performance art to explore how extremity becomes commonplace in everyday life. An important project of the collective has been Dark Diplomacy, involving a series of workshops, residences, and performances both nationally and internationally, exploring Canada-Mexico relations and perceptions.  

Researcher: Annabelle Brault

Selfie Orchestra

Dr. Chapman is the creator of Selfie Orchestra, a mobile audio art project involving cell phones to collect sounds and other data from a location. The data then becomes values that change music, much like the turning of a knob on a keyboard, and software is used to create a visual avatar for the participants. The research focuses on agency and how what we choose to listen to can mould our interpretation of our lives. In collaboration with Peter Sinclair, Chapman soon hopes to continue this research that has been on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, the article On Listening as Analysis: The Selfie Orchestra Project builds on previous literature in the field of sound studies, articulating a conception of practices of close listening as forms of analysis. In so doing, Chapman explores the etymological roots of “analysis,” discussing it as a type of loosening, or freeing up of associations, instead of reducing complex phenomena into their parts.

Chapman uses musical sampling to explore alternative ways of thinking through and communicating complex issues. His projects encourage participatory educational meaning-making and promote nonlinear dialogues. To Chapman, media exploration is a tool to access nuanced lived experiences that can be difficult to articulate directly. Dr. Chapman is also the co-creator of Landscape of Hate and Landscape of Hope.

Researcher: Owen Chapman

Social polarization during the COVID-19 “infodemic”

This project, funded by Canadian Heritage’s Digital Citizen Contribution Program, aims to explore the ways in which disinformation and conspiracy beliefs online have evolved since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to do so, Miconi and her team have launched this longitudinal research project investigating the evolution of COVID-19 related disinformation and how it relates to time spent online and online experiences, psychological distress and support for violent radicalization over a six-month period. This project will inform future prevention programs to combat disinformation and the associated legitimation of violence, which will, in turn contribute to making the post pandemic world safer and more democratic.

Researcher: Diana Miconi

Study on radicalisation prevention tools in the francosphere

This project, in the context of the UNESCO-PREV Chair’s FrancoPREV arm, has the objectives to study the status and the issues of radicalisation prevention tools in various francophone countries (Canada, Belgium, Tunisia, Morocco, Cameroun, Mauritania, Niger, and Togo), to identify promising practices and lessons learned in the field, and to present conclusions and paths of action leading to the establishment of definitive and common recommendations to improve these tools.

Researcher: David Morin

Young adult expressions of anger and hope

Still in its early stages of development, this is a large SHRC Partnership project done across multiple cities in Canada and Europe. With the goal of developing a considerable variety of co-creations – from journals to radio shows to hip-hop music to social media posts – with young adults between 18 and 25 years old for them to express how they live and conceptualize anger and hope, this endeavor will include collaborations of multi-disciplinary talent, such as musicians, journalists, and professionals working in and studying media. Though Dr. Mekki-Berrada’s expertise entails that a crucial element of the project will be dealing with Islamophobia, it will not be limited to it, instead exploring experiences of anger and hope in all their complexity all while developing critical media skills.

Researcher: Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada