Assembling "Digital Literacies": Contingent Pasts, Possible Futures

Abstract: In this article, we examine the historical emergence of the concept of "digital literacy" in education to consider how key insights from its past might be of use in addressing the ethical and political challenges now being raised by connective media and mobile technologies. While contemporary uses of digital literacy are broadly associated with access, evaluation, curation, and production of information in digital environments, we trace the concept’s genealogy to a time before this tentative agreement was reached - when diverse scholarly lineages (e.g., computer literacy, information literacy, media literacy) were competing to shape the educational agenda for emerging communication technologies. Using assemblage theory, we map those meanings that have persisted in our present articulations of digital literacy, as well as those that were abandoned along the way. We demonstrate that our inherited conceptions of digital literacy have prioritized the interplay of users, devices, and co

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Media and Communication ; 7 (2019) 2 ; 14-24

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2019
• Creator: Nichols, T. Philip ; Stornaiuolo, Amy

Further information

• DOI: 10.17645/mac.v7i2.1946
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2019071015595523368573
• Rights: Open Access; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:51 PM CET