The Heritage of Digital and Media Literacy

When people think of the term “€œliteracy”, what generally springs to mind is reading and writing, speaking and listening. These are indeed foundational elements of literacy. But because today people use so many different types of expression and communication in daily life, the concept of literacy is beginning to be defined as the ability to share meaning through symbol systems in order to fully participate in society. Similarly, the term “text”€ is beginning to be understood as any form of expression or communication in fixed and tangible form that uses symbol systems, including language, still and moving images, graphic design, sound, music and interactivity.

New types of texts and new types of literacies have been emerging over a period of more than 50 years. Many closely interrelated terms describe the new set of competencies required for success in contemporary society. These include terms like information literacy, media literacy, media education, visual literacy, news literacy, health media literacy, and digital literacy, among others. Each term is associated with a particular body of scholarship, practice and intellectual heritage, with some ideas stretching back to the middle of the 20th century and other ideas emerging in the past couple of years. These terms reflect both the disciplinary backgrounds of the stakeholders and the wide scope of the knowledge and skills involved.

These concepts must not be treated as competitors. Referencing philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, one scholar identifies the shared heritage among these new literacies and argues, “€œThe boundaries between the various members of this family overlap, but they should be seen as a closely-knit family”€ (Horton, 2007, p. 15).

We can consider different types of literacy to be part of the same family. For example, information literacy has typically been associated with research skills. Media literacy typically has been associated with critical analysis of news, advertising and mass media entertainment. Health media literacy has been associated with exploring media’s impact on making positive choices related to nutrition, exercise, body image, violence and substance abuse prevention. Digitalliteracy is associated with the ability to use computers, social media, and the Internet.

Although they reflect distinct and important theoretical ideas and values from different disciplinary traditions and historical contexts, effective programs in all of the “new media literacies” reveal many similarities. The recommendations in this report draw on the broad similarities that unite this work, which comes from many fields and disciplines including education, reading and literacy, public health, literature and the humanities, sociology, human development and psychology, cultural studies, library and information science, journalism, communication and new media studies.

In this report, the term “digital and media literacy”€ is used to encompass the full range of cognitive, emotional and social competencies that includes the use of texts, tools and technologies; the skills of critical thinking and analysis; the practice of message composition and creativity; the ability to engage in reflection and ethical thinking; as well as active participation through teamwork and collaboration. When people have digital and media literacy competencies, they recognize personal, corporate and political agendas and are empowered to speak out on behalf of the missing voices and omitted perspectives in our communities. By identifying and attempting to solve problems, people use their powerful voices and their rights under the law to improve the world around them.

For all aspects of daily life, people today need a constellation of well-developed communication and problem-solving skills that include these competencies:

These five competencies work together in a spiral of empowerment, supporting people’s active participation in lifelong learning through the processes of both consuming and creating messages. This approach is consistent with constructivist education, which, as Brazilian education scholar Paolo Freire described, adopts “a concept of women and men as conscious beings…and with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world” (1968, p. 51).

The five digital and media literacy competencies shown below represent a synthesis of the full complement of scholarship and thinking about “new literacies.” These ideas have been acknowledged by major groups and professional associations including the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), just to name a few.

As the Common Core State Standards Initiative (2010) points out, “To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, report on, and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. The need to research and to consume and produce media is embedded into every element of today’€™s curriculum.€

Teacher education programs recognize the importance of preparing future teachers to be skilled in digital and media literacy. The Professional Standards for the Accreditation of Teacher Preparation Institutions states: “Teachers understand media’s influence on culture and people’€™s actions and communication; as a result, teachers use a variety of approaches for teaching students how to construct meaning from media and nonprint texts and how to compose and respond to film, video, graphic, photographic, audio, and multimedia texts” (NCATE Standards, 2007, p. 57). The National Council of Teachers of English adopted a resolution encouraging “€œpreservice, inservice, and staff development programs that will focus on new literacies, multimedia composition, and a broadened concept of literacy”€ (NCTE, 2003). The National Communication Association (NCA, 1998) states that media-literate communicators should be able to do the following:

• Understand how people use media in their personal and public lives

• Recognize the complex relationships among audiences and media content

• Appreciate that media content is produced within social and cultural contexts

• Understand the commercial nature of media

• Use media to communicate to specific audiences

But genuine educational change in K–12 and higher education does not come about simply by generating documents or developing written standards. Similarly, websites that distribute curriculum materials and lesson plans only go so far in helping teachers acquire the knowledge and skills they need to bring these practices to their students.

What is needed now is a clear and compelling vision of the instructional practices that can best support the development of these new competencies among all Americans. In this paper, a plan of concrete action is offered to help these practices to become standard in the context of home, school and workplace.