The times indeed are changing, and a whole new world of literacy skills has opened before us. What is it that distinguishes digital literacy from literacy skills of prior generations? If I play a game with a friend in which we exchange letters containing 140 characters or less, am I "tweeting" or simply sharing short letters? Am I engaging in digital literacy if I take a picture and immediately show it to my friends? I'm pretty sure polaroid cameras have been around awhile. If I write a message to students on a projected computer screen instead of a chalkboard, am I using digital literacy skills? I would argue no. I don't think digital literacy is a product of medium, but rather of connectivity. Digital literacy means communicating with a network of people instantaneously regardless of physical location. A tweet isn't a product of having 140 characters or less, but rather the ability to send that text to potentially millions (or billions?) of people from your toilet. The term digital literacy seems intuitive because we're distinguishing new literacy media from traditional media, and digital technologies are new. However, I think this is a misnomer. Digital literacy doesn't happen when we use new technology, it happens when we engage entire social networks in ways that were previously impossible. I prefer to call it network literacy.
Network media function like simple machines. Similar to the concept of mechanical advantage allowing proportionally more work to be accomplished with the same amount of applied force, network media allow thoughts to be disseminated to potentially large networks of people without any special level of effort. There is both power and peril in this dynamic.
Imagine: You are given a mech suit that amplifies the force transmitted by your muscles one hundred fold. You imagine yourself lifting cars and jumping over buildings. You bend your legs, eager to leap into the sky. You jump, and as you rise swiftly into the air, you feel both your legs hyperextend and snap at the knee. You didn't know how to direct the new forces at your disposal. Without being trained to utilize this new ability, your mech suit is more trap than tool.
Network media can pose a similar risk. Anyone can pick up and use these new communication tools, but with such a strong ability to leverage your voice, will you do yourself more harm or good? For example:
I suspect young Alyssa Douglas would reconsider this particular tweet. Did she ponder the potential legal and social consequences of her tweet? Maybe this was a flippant youthful indiscretion, but many would look at this tweet and consider it ignorant, problematically violent, and potentially racist. For better or worse, this is the first impression most of us have of the humanoid called Alyssa Douglas.
In order to be savvy users and consumers of network media, we must be aware of how we're presenting ourselves to the world, and what kind of voice we have when it's stripped of context and inflection. Network media tends to be pithy and reductive, and we must be cautious not to let these attributes mutate our voice and the intent of our message.
Being pithy and reductive is not bad in and of itself. It's a consequence of engaging an entire network where you are competing for attention. Few people want to read your essay on evolution, but a well constructed meme will get attention.
Traditionalists may decry that substance is replaced with snark and sarcasm, but a pragmatist realizes that this type of communication is a natural outgrowth of high connectivity social networks. Quantity of information has usurped quality of information, and rather than pine for the days of yore, we must find ways to adapt to our new social context. Digital literacy doesn't mean using new technology. It means using the right media for the right task and using it effectively. Will you use it to your advantage? To your detriment? Or will you be lost to the trivial cacophony of LOLcats? The times are a changing, and it's time to adapt.
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