Researcher Spotlight: Mapping out Black youths’ experiences in Canada

Kisha McPherson, assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s school of professional communication, is working on the Black Youth Digital Content Creators Lab and Mapping Black Girl Geographies in Canada project as a resident researcher at The Creative School Catalyst. 

The Black Youth Digital Content Creators Lab looks at the media ecology of Black youth in the Toronto area. This research is the first of its kind in the Greater Toronto Area as there has been limited scholarly attention on the digital lives and experiences of Black youth. This project explores the way Black youth in the GTA use social media to connect with friends and peers and the pressures they feel when participating within specific digital spaces. The project pays particular attention to how experiences online impact the Black youth identity and education.  

“We have a group of Canadian youth that we don’t examine or talk about much in the context of digital media, and I wanted to learn more about that,” said McPherson.

Putting the notion of intersectionality at the core of their work, the lab delves into some of the social concerns that can come with Black youth interacting with digital and social media platforms.

“The lab allowed me to examine what are some concerns of these young people as they explore different social media spaces and platforms and content,” said McPherson.

The lab looked at 20 Black highschoolers from across the Greater Toronto Area, developing the project with community-based practices in mind. 

“We wanted to make sure there were multiple opportunities for us to ask questions and delve deeper into those questions and see how they would embody the space,” said McPherson.

The youth group were participating in the study on a weekly basis. The project revolved around the participants’ understanding of digital media. It included critical media literacy discussions before the start of the research portion of the project, as well as introductions to different social media platforms, she said

“The focus for the digital media platforms was how they were taking up social media platforms, which ones they were using most often and what we could learn about their usage of these particular platforms,” said McPherson. 

The study took place over ten weeks, allowing for a series of different data collections throughout, including surveys, focus groups and observations. The second half of this study allowed the participants to create content themselves. The goal was to collect two types of data: to show that all youth have similar engagement when it comes to digital media and to see the social issues Black youth experience on a day-to-day basis as a part of content creation. 

“I wanted to see, if they had a digital media platform, what would they talk about,” said McPherson. One of the participants, for example, created a podcast about hair. “I know that identity, then, is a key feature in terms of how they see themselves and what they want to share in reference to their experience of being a youth in Toronto.”

Partnering with Carl James, professor and Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora at York University, the lab is looking to use the context of the Black Youth Digital Content Creators Lab to examine Black youths' educational decision-making as a future project, said McPherson.

The Mapping Black Girl Geographies in Canada project looks at the experiences of Black girls in Toronto and Vancouver to understand how they develop their sense of belonging in Canada. 

The participants include ten girls aged 14-18 from each city. The girls use art-based digital media tools to develop identity-focused collages. Through their creations, the researchers learn more about how the girls see themselves and the types of things they identify with.

Artists will guide the participants through using photography, capturing moving images, creating digital collages and the use of mixed media.

The goal for this project is to learn more about how Black girls see their belonging in Canada, what experiences they connect to their identities and to position Black girls as part of the aesthetic of Canada and Canadian studies.

“On top of any type of interview we might do with them, we’re getting them to work through mixed media to illustrate their identity and sense of belonging. It gives us an exciting way to collect data,” said McPherson.

The researchers hope to have a digital curation or “digital archive” of the participants’ work to visually show the data and research collected during this study, she said. 

“When we think about the fabric of Canada, black girls and black boys are not necessarily included as a part of that landscape. So, this work is helping us begin to chip into that in a way that helps us capture their experience,” she said.

In addition to sharing these studies with scholars, McPherson said it would be helpful to share the studies within communities, community partners and supporters, and more importantly parents and educators. 

“When we find more context in terms of how [Black youth] identify themselves, we’ll be able to make some larger connections to educational resources and the curriculum as well,” she said. “The next step would be to think about where this information needs to be and how we can package the information in ways that people can digest it.”

As part of the knowledge dissemination stage of the Mapping Black Girlhoods project, the highly anticipated Vibrant Visions: The Art of Black Girlhood in Canada exhibition made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Lightbox in February 2025. The multimedia show includes visual art, short films, and archival storytelling to showcase the richness, resilience, and creativity of Black Canadian girlhood. The exhibit will be displayed at The Catalyst in March.

The Creative School Catalyst

The Creative School Catalyst is a large-scale space dedicated to scholarly, research, and creative (SRC) activities within The Creative School. It supports a vast scope of potential, emerging, and ongoing projects and brings people together to explore, innovate, and impact our world. The Catalyst transforms ideas to success stories, with tailored guides, grants, and funding opportunities to support research and ignite innovative ideas.

Faculty, students, and staff can submit their own SRC story for the oppritunity to be featured by  (google form) following this link (external link) .