Digital Literacy
Digital literacy refers to the skills necessary to navigate, evaluate, and create content using digital technologies. In today’s digital age, proficiency extends beyond mere technical ability; it encompasses critical thinking, ethical usage, and the capacity to engage with diverse forms of content, such as social media, websites, and multimedia applications. This concept has evolved from traditional literacy, which focused primarily on reading and writing, to include a broader understanding of multiliteracies that recognize cultural and linguistic diversity in a globalized world.
Digital literacy empowers individuals by providing them with the tools to participate actively in social, educational, economic, and political arenas. It involves discerning the credibility of information, critically analyzing various media, and responsibly managing one’s digital presence. As the digital divide highlights disparities in access and skills among different populations, promoting digital literacy is seen as essential for ensuring equitable participation in modern society. Various educational initiatives aim to equip learners of all ages with these crucial competencies, thereby fostering their ability to thrive in a technology-driven environment. Ultimately, digital literacy is not just a set of skills but a vital component for engaging effectively with the world in the 21st century.
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Subject Terms
Digital Literacy
Digital technology has changed the way we communicate, play, learn, and conduct business. In its many forms, technology presents a variety of possibilities for social, educational, economic, and political engagement and participation. These possibilities, however, can only be accessed by users who are digitally literate. Digital literacy includes social, technical, and critical thinking skills that enable the connective, communicative, collaborative, linguistic, analytical, and creative capacities required to achieve and maintain proficiency across a rapidly expanding technological landscape.
Overview
Literacy was first used to refer to functional skills of reading and writing. Advances in technology, however, has changed what it means to be literate in the digital world of the twenty-first century, which has led to an expanded definition of literacy. In 1996, the New London Group introduced the term multiliteracies in order to highlight: (1) the cultural and linguistic diversity of increasingly globalized societies, (2) the plurality of texts that are created and disseminated in these contexts, and (3) the variety of forms of text that surface in relation to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Attention to multiliteracies recognizes the value of multiple forms of representation, from reading and writing print materials to digitally mediated materials, as well as an acknowledgment of the way these forms of representation are valued differently in different cultural contexts.
As one component of the umbrella term multiliteracies, digital literacy—also sometimes referred to as digital competency, digital media literacy, or media literacy—has several loose definitions. They aim to define literacy in relation to a range of different ICTs, including computer software applications, Internet sites such as social media and blog sites, and email programs, as well as the ability to access the Internet, and what the Internet offers, through other technologies, such as iPads and mobile phones. In short, digital literacy skills are those that enhance a user’s ability to navigate, locate, read, organize, interpret, share, evaluate, and create texts, images, and sounds with digital tools in a digital environment.
A significant component of digital literacy, as well as multiliteracies, is the critical thinking required for users to be able to interpret, evaluate, and critique the meaning of texts and forms of representation located through ICTs. In this sense, a digitally literate individual is not only a person who has the technical skills to use computers, iPads, phones, and other portable devices efficiently, but is also an individual who has the skills to use these tools and devices critically, ethically, and responsibly. For example, a digitally literate person can accurately differentiate the various producers of texts (news outlets, marketing firms, individuals), evaluate the information accessed, and assess its credibility. He or she also understands the consequences of his or her virtual and digital activities and presence.
Acquiring the skills associated with digital literacy enables individuals to bridge gaps in engagement and participation. These gaps, also called a digital divide, identify the differences between people who have access to and/or can use digital tools and those who do not and/or cannot. Promoting digital literacy, and more generally multiliteracies, is a goal shared by young people, adults, policy makers, and educators. In recognition of the importance of digital literacy, educators in and out of schools are continuously pooling resources to provide computers and teach what are considered to be twenty-first century skills—evaluation, critique, and creative production—in their classrooms and community contexts. Digital skills can be learned in a variety of contexts, inside and outside of school. Just as functional literacy was for the masses centuries ago, digital literacy is empowering for children and adults alike as they gain new competencies and abilities to access, evaluate, and effectively use digital technology. Ultimately, digital literacy is vital for coping, learning, and thriving in our digital world.
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