Digital Literacy
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Work “on the concept” is an essential component for all humanities researchers, especially in fields like culture, sociology, consumption trends and, in my vision, for everyone involved in communication. Concepts, those expressions that we create and materialize through language, are vital for our comprehension of what we call reality.
Although I believe we are going towards a less post-structuralist and binary method of comprehending our reality, the commonplace “we are just talking semantics here” is still very common in Brazil. This kind of prejudice shows an utter contempt about the real power of connection that a concept can establish at the same time as it reveals an inability of grasping the authority of one expression in explaining and communicating any content.
The mobility associated with language can be easily applicable when talking about concepts. In other words, in the same way we can adapt pronouns to explain a non-binary gender reality, concepts can be equally versatile. To break the idea that a concept is something written in stone that confines the truth is something worth mentioning. For me, concepts need to be understood as linguistic agents that, as well as a chemical element, are dynamic structures, alive, altered by the passage of time which may undergo unexpected changes based on the renewal of the arrangements that make up our perception of reality.
Reinforcing the true power of a concept in enlightening our understanding, I dedicate this edition to digital literacy, an essential concept for everyone living in digital times. The term was created by the American Library Association (ALA), aiming to evolve the concept of literacy to the digital universe: “It’s about the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, assess, create and convey information, a skill that requires both cognitive and technical abilities”.
Going more in-depth about digital literacy, the first time I saw the term was in 2017 while working on the project “Todo Mundo Quem?”, researching people (Brazilians) who were out of social media. We’ve visited several capitals in Brazil, talked to a lot of people outside the grid, and discovered that they were not using it due to the lack of financial and technological resources. However, we also found people with all the proper gadgets and access to technology, at different ages as well as social status, that really didn’t know how to properly interact with apps: how to download or create an account, how to join Whatsapp or Facebook, how to download a song or even shop online. But people wanted to learn.
Still, on the subject of Brazilians living in both main cities and countryside, something that we’ve learned about the country and its unique relation to the digital world is the comprehension that access doesn’t necessarily mean ability. The fact that some people can have all the access to digital apparatus and financial backup to all the gadgets doesn’t translate into learning skills on how to navigate and truly interact with people on the internet, something that we, digital natives, take for granted.
We can say that expressions like “pdf”, “hyperlink”, “link”, “stand by”, “hacker”, “download”, “totem” and “app” to a lot of Brazilians, for some even the icons that we immediately read as “turn in” and “turn off”, can mean absolutely nothing!
The curve of technological growth, with its market interests, is essential to popularize the concept of digital literacy — but yet the quality of our interaction with the internet is not a very popular topic. Besides being one of the goals of worldwide development by UNESCO, digital literacy seems to be an essential pillar to promote the general discussion about the future of the internet, manifesting the need to rethink our relationship to digital information and data.
For a recent project at Chazz, we’ve invited Dr. Rodrigo Botelho Francisco, a professor at Universidade Federal do Paraná, Ph.D. in Science Communication and a member of Escola de Futuro of São Paulo University (USP). Rodrigo works directly with the concept in which the interaction between human-machine and machine-human can be considered a new language, with its own mechanisms, a skill that needs to be developed to map the concepts and codes in order to interact with this new universe.
In Brazil, reality shows that, according to INAF, around 30% of all Brazilians are considered functionally illiterate, and 85% of them are using social media like WhatsApp and Facebook and think of them as the whole purpose of the internet. So, I ask myself: when we chase only this curve of digital access, without thinking about digital literacy, aren’t we creating a population that is doubly illiterate? In an era where digital knowledge is more valuable than oil, the absence of critical thinking will put us in the position of selling our data for consumption in the same way the agricultural market sells soy?
The good news here is that, when we go in-depth about our capacities of digital literacy, Rodrigo highlights the importance of autonomy as the pillar of digital knowledge. When we understand that we can have autonomy in this learning process, it’s easy to apply it in everyday life: using digital services more often, exploring our smartphones, social media and interactions with digitized systems. From our relationship with technology and our experiences mediated by connectivity, the ability to understand digital language is getting updated and constantly shaped.
Of course, access to education, learning processes, and cognitive development are still the foundations of the human conscience in all areas, but I believe the inclusion of digital literacy in informal education is key since it’s unrealistic to always expect a backup concerning the national education apparatus.
The concept of autonomy can be especially potent here because we can bypass the usual stereotypes used when we talk about digital literacy and social class. It’s important to emphasize that digital literacy, by no means, is about having the most expensive new gadgets. Looking through the lens of this autonomy, in the way that we interact with language and create new bonds, I think we can make an important choice: to spend our time scrolling through feeds on social media, or learning how to play a new instrument by watching tutorials on Youtube.
Finally, once we acknowledge the concept of digital literacy, the responsibility (and duty, I would say) of big companies of the digital era (Google, Uber, Facebook, Microsoft, Youtube) in advancing this discussion is enormous. If we already know, for example, that elderly internet users are prone to spread fake news, it’s our duty to digitally instruct this part of the population. More than that, we need to demand from those companies of their responsibility and accountability in matters of digital information, as well as the creation and enforcement of laws that protect and empower the individual in the cyberspace.
concepts>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
01 Concepts as Methodologies — Researching about qualitative methodologies in affection studies, I found this article from Jan Slaby and other philosophy teachers in Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He understands the creation of concepts as a kind of methodology, since every conceptual practice is also social, used collaboratively in a context and related to intellectual practice in many different research fields. Concepts can be viewed like methodologies because both relate to social assumptions: for example, when we use a certain word or slang, that can be recognized in different contexts and scenarios, they can count as methodologies, with their own peculiarities and structures.
02 Autonomy in Learning — We witnessed a remarkable growth in people’s interest in learning languages through autonomous methods in the last few years. Phil Belson is one of the main theorists in this field and has impressive studies about the role of autonomy in politics and in the educational reform throughout the globe. For him, “autonomy is about people having more control over their lives — individually and collectively. It’s about people being able to have more control over what they learn in and outside the classroom, and learning languages for reasons and purposes that they actually have control of. Here is a podcast with Benson talking about the subject and here about his academic life path.
03 Artificial Intelligence — Again, I share a piece written by MIT journalist @karenhao, one of the best references in the subject. She recently gave a lecture where she explains in a very clear and easy way where we stand in the artificial intelligence scenario.
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A day in the life of a woman and a man — Using the American Time User Survey data, American statistic Nathan Yau simulated what actually happens on an ordinary workday of men and women, respectively. This kind of data-based visualization shows the gap between what men and women do throughout their days concerning work, leisure, children’s education, and house chores.
Breastfeeding dads — Now there’s a gadget in Japan that allows men to breastfeed, relieving the burden on moms and also calming babies. The device, breast-shaped, was projected by pediatricians and nannies. It works through an app that controls both the frequency and the amount of milk. In the context of gender equality, new models of nuclear families and flexible workplace conditions for working moms, raising maternal independence as well as the link between fathers and babies can meet a lot of needs.
Susan Meiselas, Mediations — Mediações, the exhibit of North-American documentarist and photographer Susan Meiselas, is an amazing piece of art, a retrospective of her work since the ’70s. The exhibit, in IMS Paulista, shows her unique perspective about conflicts in Central America, Kurdish diaspora, American strippers, and the sex industry, besides some grueling but necessary stories of domestic violence, showing the perspective of the victims and their sorrows. By bringing new perspectives on old subjects, her work displays the danger of relying on a single narrative while forming our own point of view.
The Contract for the Web — Sir Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global action plan to save the web from political manipulation, fake news, privacy violations and other malign forces that threaten to plunge the world into a “digital dystopia”.
The illustration’s phrase is from Fei Fei Li and the graphic piece was created by Felipe Drummond, partner of @bergamia, @urubu and in the independent version, you can find him as @caolho
