Naomi Filipiak, a senior concentrating in education, centered her capstone project on providing Black youth with the tools to critically navigate and creatively engage with the digital spaces that increasingly shape their lives. 

“The purpose of my project was to design a liberatory pedagogical framework that equips Black youth with the critical and creative tools to not only analyze the harms of algorithmic bias but to actively engage in a pedagogy of digital resistance and invention,” Filipiak explained. She envisioned the framework as a practical curricular blueprint that empowers students to reclaim digital platforms as spaces for “self-determination, community building, and the creation of new narratives.”

She chose to focus specifically on algorithmic literacy because of the central role platforms like TikTok and Instagram play in young people’s daily lives. “Their experience on these platforms is primarily shaped by algorithmically curated content,” she noted, making algorithmic systems a critical yet often unnoticed force affecting identity and well-being.

“My process centered on student voice,” she explained, beginning with two semi-structured focus groups in which Black high school students shared personal experiences of identity affirmation and misrepresentation within social media spaces. She synthesized insights from these discussions with critical race theory and digital literacy scholarship to create her pedagogical framework.

One of Filipiak’s most significant conclusions challenged dominant assumptions about youth digital engagement. She found that “Black youth already understand algorithmic systems as racialized infrastructures of surveillance and profit.” While this understanding often goes unrecognized, students demonstrated intentional strategies of protection and resistance in their online lives.

Through her analysis, Filipiak found that students carefully manage boundaries between public performance and private interior life, using drafts, close friends lists, and selective posting to avoid misrepresentation and cyberbullying. Students also identified specific forms of algorithmic harm from the prevalence of stereotypes to emotional manipulation, which required “training” their feeds through blocking and disengagement. 

These findings directly informed the design of Filipiak’s three-tier pedagogical framework, which moves from cultural sustenance and emotional safety, to explicit analysis of algorithmic oppression, and ultimately to digital invention practices. The framework supports counter-narrative creation, collective care, and student agency over algorithmic representation.

Filipiak’s capstone recognizes Black youth not simply as passive consumers of digital media, but as knowledgeable individuals navigating complex algorithmic systems. By translating student insight into a practical curricular blueprint, her work offers educators a pathway to support critical digital literacy rooted in liberation.