Critical Digital Literacy and Adolescents
How should adolescents critically use digital media?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we can dive into how adolescents should be using digital media in a critical way, we should first define what critical literacy means in regards to our digital world. David Buckingham gives this definition: “media literacy is the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts” (Buckingham 2007). This means that a student who is critically literate in the digital world should be able not only to access information digitally, but also to create and spread information in the digital sphere. Further, critical digital literacy can be defined as “a set of skills, competencies, and analytical viewpoints that allows a person to use, understand, and create digital media and tools… Digital literacy is more than technological understanding or computer skills and involves a range of reflective, ethical, and social perspectives on digital activities” (Davis 2013). This definition incorporates the idea the critical digital literacy does not just mean understanding the information, but rather analyzing the information to unveil the underlying objectives of the producer of the media. Critical digital literacy can be summed up into 5 dimensions. These dimensions include decoding, meaning making, analyzing, persona, and using. Descriptions of the 5 dimensions are included in the info-graphic below.
So now that we know what critical digital literacy is, let’s talk about how adolescents should use it. Adolescents should use digital media critically by being skeptical of the information they are taking in, and allowing that skepticism to push them to analyze and verify information. Gianfranco Polizzi describes one of the problems of misinformation today as something called a post-truth. Post-truths occur when facts and objectivity are overshadowed by emotions and personal opinions (Polizzi 2018). When adolescents are critically literate in the digital world, they will be aware of these post-truths and will not misinterpret opinions as facts. Our reading on Digital Mobile Composing discussed critical digital literacy from the composition standpoint. With the many forms of social media, adolescents are composing at an unprecedented level. Critical digital literacy is not confined to information that students are taking in, but also information that students are putting out. Julie Warner talks about a student who communicated through his circulation of memes. Students should be aware of the cultural messages encoded in the texts that they are circulating (Warner). This means that adolescents should critically analyze the media that they are circulating before composing it on their own sites. For media to be beneficial for students, they must understand it. Students should understand that not everything is factual and in our society close to nothing can be taken a face value. The following Ted Talk by Andre Quijada discussed how adolescents can be mislead by advertisements and how they can use their critical digital literacy to combat those falsehoods. (Quinjada 2013).
I would like to sum up by reiterating one of Andrea Quijada’s most profound statements (in my opinion). She said, “Once students know how to deconstruct media, they have gained a superpower” (Quijada 2013). This statement really speaks to the fact that adolescents have a world of information at their fingertips, but it means nothing if they don’t know how to use it. For adolescents to critically use digital media, they must be skeptics, analyze the information they are presented with, be aware of post-truths, and be mindful of the harms of circulating false information. If all adolescents use this superpower, they can change the digital world.
Course Resources:
Buckingham, David. (2007) Digital Media Literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the Internet. Research in Comparative and International Education, Volume 2, Number 1. p 43–55.
Warner, Julie. Critical Digital Literacies. Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones. p 143–159.
Outside resources:
Davis, Robin. (2013). Teaching critical digital literacy. Folgerpedia.Retrieved from https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Teaching_critical_digital_literacy
Polizzi, Gianfranco. (2018). Critical digital literacy: Ten key readings for our distrustful media age. The London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2018/08/29/critical-digital-literacy/
Quijada, Andrea. (Feb. 19, 2013). Creating critical thinkers through media literacy: Andrea Quijada at TEDxABQED. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHAApvHZ6XE
Teach Thought Staff. (2018). 5 Dimensions of Critical Digital Literacy: A Framework. teachthought. Retrieved from https://www.teachthought.com/literacy/5-dimensions-of-critical-digital-literacy/
