Year: 2022
Type: editorial
Abstract: & It is not surprising in this era of fake news, online toxicity, Instagram-induced depression, and algorithmic sorting, that teachers, parents, policy makers, and even the CEOs of social media companies have all come to see the importance of 'critical digital literacies'.But, what it means to be 'critical' is different for different stakeholders depending on the nature of their 'stake' in people's digital media use.The ways Mark Zuckerberg wants you to be critical are different from the ways 'media watchdogs' might want you to be critical, which are also different from the kinds of criticality promoted by anti-vaccine activists.The most common view of critical digital literacy, influenced by approaches to media literacy developed in the 1980s, is that it is chiefly about teaching students to 'think for themselves', to be 'skeptical' about what they read or watch online, to search for the 'hidden agendas' of the people who create content, and to 'do their own research'.While these things certainly constitute a big part of critical digital literacies, approaches which focus solely on this kind of 'cognitive criticality' are, at best, impoverished, and, at worst, as danah boyd (2017) has pointed out, might even backfire-witness, for instance, the discourses of skepticism and 'independent research' that underpin a lot of online conspiracy theories.Thankfully, the authors of this series of brief reports offer a more nuanced and holistic view of critical digital literacies, one which, recognizes that literacy is not just about how you think, but about what you do, that reading and writing online (and 'critiquing' what we read)
Source: TESOL Quarterly
DOI: 10.1002/tesq.3153
Author: Rodney H. Jones
Institution: University of Reading
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,500
OpenAlex ID: W4293162086