Teenage Girls Co-Creating a Social Media Literacy Programme - A Mixed-Methods Study

This research project aims to empower teenage girls (13-17 years old) in Ireland to develop a social media literacy programme. Recent research indicates that social media spaces are distinctly gendered, with teenage girls experiencing higher levels of abuse, sexualisation and cyberbullying (Milosevic et al., 2022; Ging and Siapera, 2019). Current social media literacy programmes lack teenage girls’ voices. To create change and empower the community, it is vital to enable teenage girls to take charge of the structure of social media literacy programmes. Thus, the project will follow Participatory Action Research (PAR) principles that advocate for positioning research participants at the centre of the research design by giving them the power not only to voice their lived experiences but also by allowing them to structure the research process.

This research project will utilise qualitative methods to explore the following:
1. Teenage girls’ perspectives/suggestions on how to develop a social media literacy programme
2. Co-creation/implementation of such a programme
3. Evaluation of the implemented programme

The findings of the study are anticipated to inform policy developers, school teachers, youth and social care workers, as well as families, on ways how to deliver media literacy programmes for teenage girls.