Empowering Youth to Become Global Citizens through Graphic Novels:

A Critical Content Analysis

Abstract

How we teach youth about social justice issues, and promote diversity in books, is crucial to supporting global citizenship and building cultural empathy. This research posits that graphic novels are useful tools to teach social justice topics given the duality of text and illustrations and the focus of diversity and social justice issues of many graphic novel titles. Using a critical content analysis approach, researchers examine examples of graphic novels giving marginalized communities a voice and targeting social justice topics and explore best practices in using graphic novels to empower youth to become global citizens. Preliminary findings are presented.