What are digital literacies? The myth we as teachers and parents constantly hear …
'Children and teenagers are naturally media and digitally literate. It's their world. They know how to navigate it and how to deal with it.'
Not true!
Although young people may be technology savvy from a young age, they are not digitally literate. They may know how to use remote controls, mobile phones, search the Internet, create their own blog or upload onto YouTube but, just as they need to learn to speak, read and write English and to learn the language of media, they also need to be taught how to read and analyse digital messages.
Seeing is not necessarily understanding. Interacting does not always mean acting wisely. Ease of use does not equate with responsible use.
Digital Literacy can be defined as the ability to 'read' and understand visual, aural and digital codes: the Internet, games, mobile telephones and other technologies that incorporate media, interactivity and information
For students to become digitally literate means that they need to acquire the skills to view visual, audio-visual and digital materials analytically, critically and knowledgeably. When a student has developed a set of visual and aural abilities through seeing and sensory experiences, and listening; when they are able to discriminate and interpret visible actions, objects, patterns and symbols in media, online, in games and communication technologies; when they can interact and create responsibly, then they are becoming literate in these areas.
It is through the creative use of these abilities that a digitally literate person is able to comprehend and communicate. Interdisciplinary by nature, digital literacies represent a necessary, inevitable, and realistic response to the complex, ever-changing electronic environment and communication cornucopia that surround us.
What students should know about media and digital worlds
All media and digital products are constructions that do not truly represent our lived experiences in the real world.
Many of us have been conditioned to accept the relationship between reality and the representations of reality that the media and digital worlds construct. News and current affairs are still trusted sources of 'truth' for most people. All media and digital products are scripted or pre-planned, carefully assembled, edited, selected and designed constructions. They show us worlds that are selected and that often are unrepresentative views even though they may seem to reflect reality. Learning to distinguish the reality from the reflection is crucial. Students may be cynical about mainstream media representations but are not so critical about personal online representations such as blogs, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.
In a day of virtual reality and computer simulations 'seeing is not believing.'
Media and digital representations construct reality.
There is a relationship between the way the world is presented by the media and digital products and the way we as audiences and users perceive that world. Crime is many times greater on television and in movies than in real life, but many people perceive their world to be as violent and threatening as the media construction. When we have had no direct or immediate experience of the individual, institution, issue, person or place represented, the media tend to mediate.
Each media and digital form has its own unique production values and aesthetics.
Although media outlets now have Internet sites and TV, music, print, radio and interactive media can be downloaded or used online, each form has unique technical and symbolic codes. For example, news is produced and consumed very differently depending upon whether it is in a newspaper, on radio or TV or online. The length, details, amount of pictures, still and moving, sounds and text all impact in very different ways on how we respond to it.
Each person interprets the messages differently. We are audiences, not one audience.
Audiences are not passive recipients of media and digital messages. We filter media content and messages through a complex nexus of our own nature and needs, existing beliefs and value systems, social and cultural domains. Exploring the different perceptions and perspectives students have about programs offers an important opportunity for young people to understand the differences and commonalities between them.
Media and digital products are produced by organisations and people whose operational processes and practices enable or constrain media production and use.
In a world where media ownership is fast contracting, diversity of views and content is seen to be disappearing. Even the Internet, which was originally seen as a bastion of free speech and creative expression is now largely owned by the major media industries such as Foxtel. Social networking sites such as Facebook have recently been purchased by large corporations and commercial media has been quick to copy popular interactive sites and to operate games and gaming online. The constraints on content, style, and originality when big producers are involved have resulted in look-alike media and online
content that has only commercial interests. Just as important is the power that media has in the political process and in forming our ideas and values.
Media and information producers have commercial purposes.
Except for government and community media, most media is owned and operated as businesses and therefore must make profits. Media and digital content cannot be divorced from the economic context and financial imperative that drive those industries. While many people lament the rise of tabloidism, reality TV, online games and 'infotainment', the media and digital industries justify such trends on the basis that these sell. Hence they are simply giving the public what the public wants. Independent media and government-owned media often struggle to find large audiences because the main messages are produced by large commercial corporations and many people are habituated to the undemanding content and style of these.
Media and digital technologies exist within a regulatory, legal and ethical framework in our communities.
Most governments in the world are supposed to regulate to ensure that the media has sufficient local content and diversity of ownership as well as having official watches kept on the content of the media with regard to offensive, racist, and pornographic and illegal content. With the advent of the Internet, regulating what we see, hear and interact with has become very difficult. The issues that need to concern us focus on getting the balance right between allowing freedom of choice for audiences and free speech in our media and regulating to ensure that we are protected from offensive, overly violent and dangerous materials.
Media and information products contain values and ideologies.
Most adults think of the media – movies, television programs, radio, advertising, print and digital communication – as separate and discrete products. Young people may move fairly effortlessly between them and certainly the media is merging online. Ideologically however, media and digital messages consistently construct, contain, carry and convey certain basic beliefs and values – for example, that consumption of goods is a necessity, that violence works in solving problems, that good guys usually win. When we move away from seeing media and digital products as discrete self-contained programs and look at the consistent and recurring themes that pervade them, we begin to recognise the cumulative value system at work.
Our use of media and technologies impacts on others.
Students need to become more reflective about the ethical choices we make as participants and communicators and the impact we have on others. Students often participate in chat, upload images and post on the Internet. What may start out as a 'joke' e.g. posting a picture of someone in an embarrassing situation can lead to great distress and may even threaten the victim's life. Working through questions of ethical practices may be more valuable than the answers produced because the process will help everyone to recognise and articulate the different assumptions that guide their behaviour.
Understanding these concepts can help students:
become active and critical thinkers about media and digital technologies develop criteria for making decisions about their use of media digital technologies develop safe practices find and identify relevant and quality products and experiences that will entertain, inform and educate them in meaningful ways talk about what they are consuming and why empower them to be creators, not just consumers evaluate information and its sources critically and incorporate selected information into his/her knowledge base and value system understand many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and to access and use information ethically and legally
What is the difference between media and cyber technologies?
Where media that is not interactive and cyber technologies differ is in their characteristics.
The characteristics of the Internet and electronic communication in general are speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity.
Narrative is constructed differently in digital worlds. Linearity doesn't disappear altogether but new media challenges us in different ways to written and media narratives. It may be difficult to decide what, where and how the narrative finishes, for example. The Internet has an anti-narrative element. Clicking on links on a website may lead you sideways or completely away from the place you started. New elements are constantly being added to Internet narratives, and games operate through input from players whose proficiency determines how the narrative will end.
For an excellent online article about how digital narratives are understood by young people
Reframing research and literacy pedagogy relating to CD narratives: Addressing 'radical change' in digital age literature for children
(http://www.iier.org.au/iier13/unsworth.html) by Professor Len Unsworth, University of Sydney.
Genres in a digital world may mirror those of literature, theatre, arts and media but by their very nature cross over and are frequently malleable. Digital genres not only act as text but also as medium. Genre needs to accommodate concepts such as 'communicative purpose', 'moves', and 'rhetorical structure' take account of the multimodal, non-linear characteristics of web texts. Blogs, multiplayer games, fan fiction, chat rooms, and other popular digital genres are not just ways for people to communicate in the world, but in fact create whole worlds within which people communicate.
For further information about the study of digital genres
The Language of Digital Genres – A Semiotic Investigation of Style ...
In the Australian Children's Television (ACTF) series Noah & Saskia there are several digital genres represented including chat rooms and online comics. This is a frame from one of the two main characters (Noah) from the online comic, 'Hammer's Heroes'. For more information about Noah & Saskia visit the Noah & Saskia sites at the ABC (http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/noahandsaskia/) or the ACTF (http://www.actf.com.au/learning_centre/title_pages/nas_tp.php).
However, the basic conceptual framework whereby we study media and digital messages is the same, and the way that media and ICT impact on our lives is very similar.
Another important subject informs digital literacies, that of traditional media education topics —representation; stereotyping; bias; gender and minority portrayal; objectivity and point of view; fashion; advertising and self-image; questions of ownership and content; the globalisation of media; the relationship between audience and content are as pertinent as ever in the new industrial education/entertainment complex.
However, crucial new topics are arising: the effects of interactivity; the protection of personal privacy; anonymity and identity; cyber hate and cyber bullying
– its tactics and motives; the impact of new technologies on personal communication; the potential of electronic democracy; freedom of expression versus censorship. And in an environment with millions of publishers and few gatekeepers, the skills to decode online marketing and to determine the differences between fact and opinion have become essential. Media literacy For more detail about media literacy explore Some Principles of Media Literacy (http://www.ced.appstate.edu/departments/ci/programs/edmedia/medialit/article4.html) by Dr David Considine, an international expert in media literacy.
More resources for media literacy and media education
Cable in the Classroom, media literacy report – CIC survey shows media literacy a vital and under-served need in schools. Viewed 10 October 2007 (http://www.ciconline.org)
Metiri Group (2007) Technology in schools: What the research says, CISCO Systems (http://www.cisco.com)
UNESCO (2007) Media education: A kit for teachers, students, parents and professionals, 3 January 2007. (http://portal.unesco.org)
What are the Characteristics of Digital Genres? - Genre Theory from a Multi-Modal Perspective.
