Civic Engagement: Examining the Role of Media Literacy in Digital Activism

Abstract

The contemporary Indian public sphere especially has been testimony to the rise of digital activism as a powerful form of civic participation where citizens can gather around issues such as agrarian distress, gender justice, institutional accountability, and others. Today, in the Indian public sphere, digital activism has become a prominent force for civic engagement, empowering citizens to unite on issues of agrarian distress, gender justice, institutional accountability and beyond. While the increased ownership of smartphones and cheaper mobile data has made the political public sphere more inclusive, they have also made it vulnerable to misinformation, echo-chambers and “click tivism”. The paper is about media literacy’s ability to bridge the divide between the momentary nature of digital engagement and more sustained civic participation. Through the works of Henry Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture and Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, this paper contends that media literacy skills are an important civic competency required for the robustness of democracy.The paper, by exploring recent cases from India such as the farmers’ protests (2020-2021), the grassroots mobilization of COVID-19 aid networksand student movements like the #MeToo India and the anti-CAAprotests, illustrates that media literacy enables individuals to authenticate information, resist disinformation, to coordinate distributed agency and to convert outrage into tangible, real-world action. Through these analyses, movements embedded with media literacy skills proved to be more resistant to misinformation and more effective.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199963313.2026.85-96