Defining Digital Literacy

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Defining digital literacy
Media literacy goes online
How does it portray the world?
How does it communicate?
Who produced it, and why?
How are audiences targeted, and how do they read?
Web literacy
1. Representation
How websites claim to 'tell the truth', and establish their authenticity and authority. The presence or absence of particular viewpoints or aspects of experience. The reliability, veracity and bias of online sources.

The implicit values or ideologies of web content, and the discourses it employs. 2. Language
The use of visual and verbal rhetoric’s in the design of websites (graphic design principles, the combination of visuals and text, the use of sound). How the hypertextual (linked) structure of websites encourages users to navigate. How users are addressed: for example, in terms of formality and 'user-friendliness'. The kinds of 'interactivity' that are on offer, and the degrees of control and feedback they afford to the user. 3. Production

The nature of web authorship, and the use of the internet by companies, individuals or interest groups as a means of persuasion and influence. The technologies and software that are used to generate and disseminate material on the web, and the professional practices of web ‘authors’. Commercial influences, the role of advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Commercial relationships between the web and other media (e.g. movies, games). 4. Audience

How users can be targeted by commercial appeals, both visibly and invisibly. Online ‘participation’ (web polls to bulletin boards to ‘user-generated content’). How the web is used to gather information about consumers.

How different groups use the internet in their daily lives, and for what purposes. How people use and interpret particular sites, the pleasures they gain from them. Public debates about the ‘effects’ of the internet, e.g. online safety and ‘addiction’. Game...
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