Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

6.1.10 | Digital Culture & Education, an international peer-reviewed journal, has just published a new special themed issue, “Beyond ‘New’ Literacies.”

Dana Wilber, the issue’s editor and an assistant education professor at Montclair State University, writes in the introduction that the aim was to “broaden the conversation around new literacies research by extending the possibilities to include multiple lenses and research perspectives. Here we mean ‘beyond’ as ‘in addition to’ – in the sense of adding to the conversation between new literacies research and other theoretical and methodological frames that will enrich the study of new literacies.”

She continues:

Defining new literacies as ‘new’ is possible in two ways; first in their “technical stuff”, or in terms of the kinds of affordances that new technological tools allow and second in their “ethos” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007, pp. 7-9). The technical relates directly to the technical affordances of the technology, or the direct practices the technology allows. Texting via mobile phones is an excellent example. What are the technical affordances associated with texting? What does texting allow or constrain? Texting allows for short, staccato messages rather than longer, full messages with complete words, which has given rise to an entire genre of writing and set of phrases and abbreviations, some of which have crossed over into other language and literacy practices. The limitations of the mobile phone constrain and shape the literacy practices available to the tool in particular ways.

New literacies are also new in their “ethos” or spirit. New literacies, in contrast with traditional literacies, are more participatory. They are more collaborative in allowing for the open sharing and creation of information on sites like wikis and blogs. New literacies also offer the opportunity for the design of texts that are fluid and can be added to, remixed and constantly re-shaped. They can be shared easily through less hierarchical forms of distribution (Jenkins, 2006; Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). The ideas of the “read-write” web and Web 2.0, where easy publishing, blogging, posting of pictures and social networking exist has created a shift of power that changes in possibilities of authorship and challenges notions of expertise. One way of thinking about the change in power is as a change in mindset between ideas of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 (Knobel & Wilber, 2009) or between a “physical-industrial” and “cyberspatial-postindustrialist” model (Lankshear & Knobel 2007, p.11). In the first case technology is the location of information and texts are unchanging; the user interacts with the technology primarily to get information on an individual basis. In the second case, texts are changeable, and authorship is open, giving the user more power to write, remix, and publish. Expertise is open, and collaboration is common and distributed among users.

This change in mindset is exemplified in the depth of participation by users in what is known as “participatory cultures,” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 3) how users participate in popular culture and new literacies through practices such as fan fiction, gaming, and online web communities. This involves participation in communities, which may include contributing original texts, organizing online and face-to-face meetings, and editing and publishing work.

Each of the seven articles is available for viewing online or as a PDF. Included among them: “The language of Webkinz: Early childhood literacy in an online virtual world,” by Rebecca Black, an assistant professor of language, literacy and technology at the University of California, Irvine; “Education remix: New media, literacies, and the emerging digital geographies,” by Lalitha Vasudevan, an assistant professor of technology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University; and “Talking past each other: Academic and media framing of literacy,” by Katherine Ognyanova, a doctoral candidate in communication at the University of Southern California.