Popular education in the digital age: activism and young human rights defenders in Latin America

This paper examines how young human rights defenders (HRDs) in Latin America experience educational processes related to human rights within the digital environment, to map the possibilities and tensions of Freirean popular education in contemporary digital activism. The paper explores how key tenets of popular education manifest in digital spaces: using learners’ realities as starting points, enabling dialogical co-construction of knowledge, and developing critical consciousness for transformation. Through a multiple-case study involving 12 participants, aged 13–26 years old, from 8 Latin American countries, the paper explores how the digital environment facilitates the three dimensions of Human Rights Education (HRE), learning about, for, and through rights. Findings demonstrate the digital environment enables young HRDs to challenge deficit discourses, engage in praxis, and exercise participatory politics with reduced adult gatekeeping. However, persistent inequalities in access and structural limitations of platforms designed without children in mind constrain this potential.