Acknowledgments
We wish first to acknowledge the contributors to this book. The work assembled here represents local projects and perspectives from around the world that interweave the pro-social, inclusive and transformative affordances of Web 2.0 media. This includes some of the highly engaging grassroots community development, democratic models of participation, spaces for innovative, humane teaching and learning, critical reflections and the development thereof, and programs and visions of social change that embrace social justice while rejecting inequality, hate, bias, and violence, whether physical or symbolic.
We also would like to thank colleagues and students who continue to collaborative with and also to push us further. We each owe a debt to the three universities in which we work. Our privilege as Canadian academics is not something we take for granted.
The editors recognize the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for supporting the research project entitled Social Media, Citizen Participation and Education (Grant #435-2017-0745), as well as the Fonds de Recherche du Québec (Grant #294057) for its support of the UNESCO Chair in Democracy, Global Citizenship and Transformation Education, for which Carr is the Chair-holder, Thésée the Co-Chair and Hoechsmann a member of the Executive Committee. The UNESCO Chair DCMÉT has played a key role in supporting the research and collaboration related to this project and others.
The current book is a follow-up and companion to Democracy 2.0: Media, Political Literacy and Critical Engagement (Brill | Sense, 2018). We are grateful as always to the terrific support at Brill | Sense, specifically from Evelien van der Veer, Alessandra Giliberto and Jolanda Karada.
The three editors trace their first meeting back over a dozen years ago to the Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy, co-founded by Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg. We are indebted to the contributions of Paulo, Nita, Joe and Shirley and the exceptional community of scholars and scholarship that formed around the Freire Project and more broadly within the field of critical pedagogy.
This project has benefited from Hoechsmann’s involvement in the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy caucus. We are pleased to continue to collaborate with UNESCO colleagues on critical media literacy work.
Finally, we wish to acknowledge and sing the praises of our research assistant and editorial wizard, Iowyth (Cassandra) Witteman, as well as the talented artist Dylan “Bones” Court, both of Orillia, Ontario.