Item
Media literacy and the challenge of new information and communication technologies
- Author
- Sonia Livingstone
- Year
- 2004
- Publisher
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Taylor & Francis Group.
- DOI/Link
- View Source
- Abstract
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The concept of media literacy, like that of literacy itself, has long proved
contentious(Luke, 1989). The hugely significant skills of reading and writing have been
augmented by the also-significant skill of ‘reading’ audiovisual material from the midtwentieth century onwards. Today, as we witness a further major shift in information and
communication technology (ICT), a new form of literacy is emerging, uneasily termed
computer literacy or internet literacy. This new form of literacy, if its is indeed ‘new’, and
if it is appropriately labeled ‘literacy’, lies at the heart of a series of lively debates
intersecting the academy, the policy community, and the public.
A casual search of bookshops makes plain the explosion of academic interest in
questions of literacy, with titles exploring literacy in the electronic era (Snyder, 1998), the
information age (Kubey, 1997), the digital era (Warnick, 2002), the digital world (Tyner,
1998) or even cyberliteracy (Gurak, 2001). These volumes draw together a
multidisciplinary mix of specialistsin literacy, culture, media education, human-computerinteraction, and social studies of technology (Kellner, 2002; Kubey, 1997; Poster, 2001;
Tyner, 1998). Meanwhile, policy makers are determining regulatory frameworks required
to produce an ICT-literate population, at times turning to the academy for guidance.