What is Digital Media Literacy?

 

Key Concepts for Digital Media Literacy

MediaSmarts’ approach to digital media literacy, and media education in Canada in general, draw on a number of distinct scholarly traditions and theoretical approaches. The earliest and most influential school of media education in the Canadian K-12 context is the key concepts approach, which was inspired by the work of Len Masterman and developed into curriculum and support materials by Ontario practitioners including Barry Duncan and John Pungente. This approach embraced Masterman’s contention that : “you can teach about the media most effectively, not through a content-centered approach, but through the application of a conceptual framework which can help pupils to make sense of any media text …The acid test of whether a media course has been successful resides in the students’ ability to respond critically to media texts they will encounter in the future.”

These key concepts were a way of integrating and synthesizing different theoretical approaches to media, and making them usable and comprehensible in a K-12 context. The key concept that media are constructions that re-present reality, for instance, primarily draws on the theory of framing as articulated by Goffman, which holds that our view of the world – our “framework” – is shaped in part by the media we consume and influences our views of what is frequent or infrequent, what is normal or abnormal, et cetera. (Empirical research has supported this idea, finding that media influence audiences’ ideas of reality on subjects ranging from what drowning looks like to correct kitchen hygiene.) Agenda-setting theory elaborates on this, showing that how a media work “frames” its subject – what is included and what is left out, whose perspectives are represented and whose voices are heard, which characters the audience is invited to sympathize with – have as much or more impact on our views as more explicit “messages.” (Indeed, fiction and entertainment media may be more influential on individual attitudes and public opinion that news or other informational media: one study found that while exposure to news stories about trans people had no effect on audiences’ views, seeing a trans character in a scripted TV series made people more likely to have supportive attitudes towards trans people – an effect that was even more powerful among those whose attitudes had been more negative to begin with.)

Similarly, the concept that media have social and political implications draws heavily on the critical literacy tradition, which focuses on students “abilities to criticize stereotypes, dominant values, and ideologies, and competencies to interpret the multiple meanings and messages generated by media texts” while the concept that each medium has a unique aesthetic form is based on Marshall McLuhan’s insight that “the nature of the medium shapes what ‘content’ works best through it.” Stuart Hall’s then-recent paper “Encoding/Decoding,” which argued that “viewers may ‘decode’ meaning in ways other than those in which producers ‘encode’ it … [and] ‘readers’ of popular culture may interpret from within dominant ideology, but they can also reserve the right ‘to make a more negotiated application’ or to read oppositionally,” inspired the key concept that audiences negotiate meaning. (This last has been given empirical support by research into the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model or DSMM, which has identified three different factors that can influence one’s susceptibility to media effects, as well as three states – cognitive, emotional, and excitative – that can mediate media them. In effect, the DSMM suggests that audiences are always negotiating meaning, but can also learn to do so more consciously and intentionally.)

Though the key concepts approach proved to be highly influential both within Canada and internationally, other approaches found in curricula and classrooms across the country highlight some of its gaps and limitations. Media education in British Columbia, for example, emphasized media production much more than in Ontario, taking the approach that “educating young people about the media (its ideological function, its constructed nature, its commercial agenda, etc.) is important, but this will not be accomplished by critical deconstruction alone.” Focused as it is on an intellectual engagement with media, this approach also does not address students’ affective interactions with media, such as fear reactions, which are of particular importance for younger children.

Finally, the key concepts (eight in the original formulation, five as synthesized by MediaSmarts in Canada and the Center for Media Literacy in the United States) have their roots in a media environment where producing and distributing media were expensive and time-consuming and, as a result, were limited to a small number of groups, primarily large corporations and governments. The “flow” of media was also primarily one-way: aside from unusual acts such as writing a letter of complaint, audiences had few opportunities to interact with those large media producers, or to exchange media with one another without a large media producer as an intermediary.

The advent of networked digital media changed both of those circumstances, and the relationship between audiences and media, in fundamental ways. First, it changed media production from a time-consuming process requiring expensive and frequently bulky tools to one that is inexpensive, portable and relatively easy (to underscore this fact, all of the top five favourite online platforms among Canadian youth in 2023 – YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat – feature primarily content created by their users, not commercial media producers.) Media distribution was changed even more radically, as both digital format and high-speed networked connections made it possible for audiences to not only become media creators but to bring their creations to audiences potentially as large as those for traditional media, and also to interact with others. The range of students’ media experiences, therefore, expanded from being primarily consumers to include activities like creation, curation, socializing, activism, annotation and criticism, collaboration, and darker forms of engagement such as bullying or participation in hate groups.

As a result of these changes in the media environment, many scholars feel that “digital and media literacy should be taught as literacy and… the fields of digital and media literacies can no longer exist in isolation from each other.” Integrating digital and media literacy means supplementing the original key concepts with different approaches, primarily drawn from different traditions. One of these is the school variously called New Literacies, Multiliteracies, 21st Century Literacies and Transliteracy, which emphasizes preparing students to participate in networked environments. The other is the line in science and technology studies that leads through Actor-Network Theory to the Mechanisms and Conditions Framework, which investigates the impact of our media tools – specifically, their real or imagined affordances (what can be done with them) and defaults (what is obvious or expected to be done with them) on how we use them, and their consequent effects on those with whom we interact and on our communities and society. As with media effects, however, these impacts are not inevitable, and can be negotiated: “Technologies may affect human life in myriad and sometimes profound ways, yet outcomes are never certain and can be disrupted, thwarted, and circumvented to sometimes surprising ends… This perspective resists designations of either human subjects or technological objects as autonomous and effectual and instead positions human-technology dynamics as necessarily relational.”

Put together, these differences between traditional and networked media require an expansion of the original key concepts. Just as the concept that media are constructions leads to the other four (or seven) by implication, the concept that digital media are networked implies four consequent concepts: that digital media are shareable and persistent (because of the ease of copying and distributing them), that digital media have unanticipated audiences (because the linked nature of digital networks can easily lead any audience to any content), that interactions through digital media can have real impact (because when we use them we are interacting with other individuals, in communities, or both) and that digital media experiences are shaped by the tools we use, in particular their affordances and defaults. (Though a departure from traditional media education, this last key concept actually returns to Marshall McLuhan’s insight that “we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.” These additional key concepts help to identify new competencies that media education must develop (such as the ability to access media and to use media tools), new topics that students must learn about (such as privacy and the ethical dimensions of interacting online) and new approaches to existing subjects (such as teaching companion reading as a step before deeper critical engagement with an informational text.)

Key concepts:

• Provide teachers with a theoretical basis for developing their own media literacy activities, even if they are not media studies specialists. While a focus on the key concepts should certainly not be taken as a justification not to provide more thorough media and digital literacy training, it at least gives teachers and students a way to start asking questions. Similarly, while they do not excuse a lack of digital technology in schools, they make it possible to do digital media literacy without technology – and give teachers the freedom and flexibility to decide when digital literacy might be better taught with little or no use of digital technology, as well as the ability to teach digital media literacy when access to technology is limited or unavailable.
• Provide a common language for creating and sharing resources. Teachers in every province and territory, and around the world, can refer to the key concepts when designing and sharing lessons or activities.
• Provide a learning path as children mature and develop. Because these concepts are so fundamental, students can learn them in ways that are appropriate for their developmental stages.
• Allow students to transfer the skills they learn to different contexts. For example, teaching students to authenticate information for class work teaches them how to do it in school contexts, but not how – or why – to do it in other situations. A key concepts approach provides an organizing principle in which the skills specific to different disciplines and contexts can be applied.
• Give teachers tools to develop their own materials and adapt materials to their students’ needs.
• Allow teachers to add a digital media literacy component to existing lessons or activities.
• Put students in the position of content or technology experts, freeing teachers to train them to think more critically.
• Keep resources from becoming obsolete when students’ media habits change. Because the specific content is generally less important than students’ understanding of the key concepts, in many cases keeping an activity up-to-date is just a matter of finding more recent examples.

 

When activities do need more extensive updating, key concepts help us identify why the current approach doesn’t work and develop new approaches that will. For example, early media literacy approaches to verifying information, such as the CRAAP test, were developed at a time when it was expensive to create media, and a small number of gatekeepers controlled most distribution, so it made sense to judge sources primarily through close reading – analysing them for tone, bias, use of loaded language and so on. In today’s networked media environment, though, information overload is the problem, so students now need to learn to triage their sources first, using networked tools for companion reading to quickly determine which are worth close reading and which aren’t.

Most importantly, key concepts provide a lens for analyzing any media text or experience. Sometimes, particularly with younger children, a single concept will be enough to help us understand something; more often, two or more ‘lenses’ will be applied together, or the tension between two lenses may be explored.

 

Media are constructions

We instinctively see media as being like windows, allowing an unfiltered view of the world. In fact, though, media are frames that select and direct our attention. Media works are created by individuals who make choices about what to include, what to leave out and how to present what is included.

Every aspect of a media work is the result of a choice, but not all choices are free or conscious. Decisions are based on the creators’ own point of view, which will have been shaped by their opinions, assumptions and biases – as well as media they have been exposed to. As a result of this, while we instinctively view many media works as direct representations of what is real, media works are never entirely accurate reflections of the real world: even the most objective journalist or documentary filmmaker has to decide what footage to use and what to cut, as well as where to put the camera. The fact that we see a puppet as a person, for instance – even when we see the puppeteer – shows how much our minds see media as reality. The instinct to see them as real, even when we see evidence they aren’t, is why it’s so important to ask critical questions about the realities that media show us.

Sample questions to ask:

• Who created this media work?
• What is its purpose?
• What assumptions or beliefs do its creators have that are reflected in the content?

 

Media have commercial implications

Most media production is a business and must, therefore, make a profit. In addition, media industries belong to a powerful network of corporations that exert influence on content and distribution. Questions of ownership and control are central – a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media. Even in cases where media content is not made for profit – such as YouTube videos and Facebook posts – the ways in which content is distributed are nearly always run with profit in mind. However, commercial pressure is not just one-way: “the professional production of media follows an industrial logic, with a highly structured and routinized production pipeline and process, while at the same time undergoing constant change to accommodate fickle audiences that are increasingly less likely to congregate as a ‘mass’ around content.” As well, the conventional wisdom in an industry may be more influential than the actual commercial reality: for instance, despite the fact that films that have at least two Black directors, producers or screenwriters earn an average of ten per cent more than those that don’t, Black people are still heavily under-represented in Hollywood – at an estimated cost of $10 billion dollars US per year.

Understanding the business model of a media work’s maker is key to analyzing it. For instance, while news outlets may be influenced by the views or interests of their owners, their content is much more affected by a commercial consideration: the views of their audience. News outlets can appeal to audiences by providing news that is accurate, news that is entertaining, and news that affirms and reinforces audiences’ identities. Most outlets provide at least some of each of these, but understanding which one most affects a particular outlet’s bottom line is key to critically engaging with them: the more people know about how the news industry actually works, for instance, the less likely they are to believe in conspiracy theories.

Similarly, understanding the business model of an online platform such as a search engine or social network is vital to recognizing what implications using it might have for your privacy and what purposes their algorithms might have been optimized for. For example, a search engine that is optimized more for relevance – giving you the information it thinks you want to see – will deliver different results than one that weights accurate and reliable results more heavily. Similarly, nearly all social networks and entertainment sites are optimized to keep you engaged with the site, encouraging you to stay on them longer and return more often.

Sample questions to ask:

• What is the commercial purpose of this media work (in other words, how will it help someone make money)?
• How does this influence the content and how it’s communicated?
• How did considerations of cost influence how the work was made (casting, special effects, coding, etc.)?
• How do those purposes influence the content and how it’s communicated?

 

Media have social and political implications

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

Whether and how media affect us is one of the oldest and most contentious questions in media studies. While few scholars still believe that media will affect everyone in the same way, research has shown repeatedly that they do influence us. In some cases the impact is direct: one study found more than half of Americans had done something based on seeing something in a movie or TV show, and one-third had looked for more information about an issue after seeing it handled in fiction. More often, though, media effects are more indirect: media convey ideological messages about values, power and authority.

Who or what is absent in media may be more important than what or who is included. These messages may be the result of conscious decisions, but more often they are the result of unconscious biases and unquestioned assumptions – and they can have a significant influence on what we think and believe.

As a result, media have great influence on politics and social change through what is called agenda-setting: as political scientist Bernard Cohen put it, media “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.” TV news coverage and advertising can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image; representations of world issues, both in journalism and fiction, can affect how much attention they receive; and society’s views towards different groups can be directly influenced by how – and how often – they appear in media.

As with commercial considerations, social and political implications often work in both directions. The political leanings of news outlets, for instance, are more influenced by their audience than their owners,[ix] and audiences on both sides typically feel that media are biased against them. As a result, it’s not generally worth giving too much attention to media makers’ motivations for social and political implications. No text is neutral: while the creators’ intentions are not irrelevant, there is very little difference between the impact of a representation intended by the creator and one that is an unconscious product of their assumptions, their sense of what the audience wants, commercial considerations, industry conventional wisdom and so on. In fact, unintended implications can be more powerful because they are less obvious, and therefore less likely to trigger the audience’s critical thinking.

This concept and the previous one are good examples of how different concepts may be in tension. While advertisers have their own political goals, most often these act as a counterbalance to the partisan leanings of a news outlet. A good gauge of a news source’s reliability, therefore, might be “How far outside of the audience’s political comfort zone is an outlet willing to go in the name of accurate reporting?”

Sample questions to ask:

• Who and what is shown in a positive light? In a negative light?
• Why might these people and things be shown this way?
• Who and what is not shown at all? What voices, perspectives, and experiences are missing?
• What conclusions might audiences draw based on the above?
• What are the views of the expected audience? How might those influence the media work?

 

Audiences negotiate meaning

The meaning of any media work is not created solely by its producers but is, instead, a collaboration between them and the audience – which means that different audiences can take away different meanings from the same work. Just as media works are never neutral, the way we read them is not neutral either:

Each time we read, write, or create, we draw from our past experiences and understanding about how the world works… If you agree with a text, it is easy to read it sympathetically and hard to read it critically. However, if you find a text offensive, it is hard to engage with it. But we have to do both: we have to engage with texts on their own terms – both to learn from them and to critique them – and we have to recognize that our identities shape how we consume and produce texts.

The interaction between this key concept and the previous one was well summarized by Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania: “Prolonged exposure to media messages… has an impact on attitudes, but viewers also come predisposed to certain beliefs, and… producers are attuned to what their viewers want to hear.”[xiv] Media literacy encourages us to understand how individual factors, such as age, gender, race and social status affect our interpretations of media.

However, it is important not to overstate the freedom that we have in negotiating meaning. Audiences, especially those from groups that have traditionally been marginalized in media industries, do engage in “resistant reading,” interpreting works in ways that are directly contrary to the generally received meaning; it is nevertheless true that, as bell hooks put it, “while audiences are clearly not passive and are able to pick and choose, it is simultaneously true that there are certain ‘received’ messages that are rarely mediated by the will of the audience.”

In other words, while we don’t automatically accept the surface meaning of media works, most of us will take away a meaning that is fairly close to it. Only a small number of people, mostly those whose identity or experience lead them to a resistant reading – such as women, racialized or 2SLGBTQ people and others that have historically been mis- and under-represented in media – will have a significantly different interpretation. Until members of these groups have more meaningful participation in the media industries, however, neither the portrayals nor the mainstream audience’s interpretation of them are likely to change.

Similarly, some works are more congenial to resistant readings than others: in most video games, for instance, ‘resistant play’ – choosing actions other than the ones the designers assume you will take – will prevent you from progressing very far in the game. This illustrates the connection between this key concept and the next, that each medium has a unique aesthetic form.

Sample questions to ask:

• How might different people see this media work differently?
• How does this make you feel, based on how similar or different you are from the people portrayed in the media work?
• How were the media makers influenced by their perception of the intended audience?
• What alternative readings are possible?
• How does the medium or genre influence how easy or hard it is to “read against the text”?

 

Each medium has a unique aesthetic form

The content of media depends in part on the nature of the medium. This includes the technical, commercial and storytelling demands of each medium: for instance, the interactive nature of video games leads to different forms of storytelling – and different demands on media creators – than what are found in film and TV. Different media require different levels of ‘literacy’ to understand them, as they rely on codes and conventions to communicate meaning. Some, such as television, are made to be as accessible as possible, while others like film or comics may use techniques that take more familiarity to decode, and a few (such as video games) require you to master specialized skills to see all of their content. (Many genres have specialized codes and conventions, as well.)

All media and genres have ‘rules of notice’ that creators use to direct our attention (such as cuts and close-ups) and inflect our experience (such as angles and music), which we can learn to recognize and analyze. Learning the ‘language’ of a medium is necessary to gather evidence to support an interpretation, but it can have more immediate applications as well: for example, learning to recognize the surface features which most of us use to judge the reliability of a website – as well as knowing that spreaders of misleading information deliberately use those features to fool us – is an essential part of learning to recognize what is true online.

Since “channel surfing” became the norm in the cable news era, the media experience has shifted from show to flow, and on platforms such as YouTube, Netflix and TikTok that is now the default. This means our analysis of form, codes and conventions must be applied not just to specific media works but to the entire medium: TV ads, for example, were relatively easy to confront because they interrupted the show, but today’s influencer ads don’t interrupt the flow.

Sample questions to ask:

• What techniques does the media work use to get your attention and to communicate its message?
• In what ways are the images in the media work manipulated through various techniques (for example: lighting, makeup, camera angle, photo manipulation)?
• What are the expectations of the genre (for example: print advertising, TV dramas, reaction videos, Instagram stories) towards its subject?

In traditional media, content only flowed one way: producers created it, then sold or licensed it to distributors who then brought it to you. In digital media, by contrast, you’re no longer the final link in a distribution chain but a node in the middle of an infinite network. You can share content with other people as easily as a producer or distributor shares it with you. Collaboration and dialogue are the norm, rather than solitary creation and broadcasting, and sometimes change the content that we see.

For a medium to be networked it must have three characteristics:

• All nodes must be connected or connectable (though there may be many intervening nodes)
• It must be possible to send (and receive) messages to and from multiple nodes at once (many-to-many)
• Connections must be two-way: it must be possible for nodes to interact (though that interactivity may be made asymmetrical – people on Twitter don’t automatically follow you, for example. As well, networked platforms can limit your ability to interact; your options for consciously interacting with Netflix are limited, but information – such as what you like to watch – still flows back to them on their terms)

 

Power in networks is not hierarchical, but neither is it evenly distributed: it rests in the nodes with the most – and most asymmetrical – links. This means that those who had gatekeeping power in the old media environment have had their influence reduced, but not eliminated. Power in networks can be imagined in terms of betweenness and closeness: betweenness “measures the control a node has over what flows in the network,” while closeness “measures how easily a node can access what is available via the network… A combination where a node has easy access to others, while controlling the access of other nodes in the network, reveals high informal power.”

These links are always at least two-way, even if you’re not aware of the ways you’re sending data. This means that everyone and everything is linked to everything else. As a result, the barriers to participation are much lower than in traditional media and anyone can publish content and find an audience. This means that there is a much greater range of choice for media consumers,  but this choice can be overwhelming. As a result, consumers have largely moved from letting their media experiences be curated by book publishers, movie studios and television networks to having them curated by recommendation algorithms – with the difference being that this curation mostly happens without our knowing it. This is why understanding how our media experiences are curated and being able to take a more active role in choosing and engaging with media is a fundamental digital media literacy skill. In the old media environment, the main focus of media literacy was on how different groups were represented; while this remains important, it is now equally important to consider how and to what extent different groups are able to participate in networked media.

The networked nature of digital media also means that users can interact with peers and celebrities at the same time, and also has important implications when we need to authenticate information or recognize a source’s bias and point of view. The networked nature of digital media also makes it possible for formal and informal communities to develop online, and for the members of those communities to shape their norms and values.

Sample questions to ask:

• Where does this work sit in the network? What networked tools can you use to help interact with or interpret it?
• Who has control over what passes between nodes of this network? Who has influence?
• What is easy to access through this network? What is more difficult?
• How are you expected to interact with this message?
• How might the expected interactions influence how it was made?

 

Digital media are shareable and persistent

Digital content is permanent: everything that is transmitted is stored somewhere and can be searched for and indexed. When considered together with the concept that digital media are networked, this means that most of this content can also be copied, shared or spread at a trivial cost. Even things that are apparently temporary (like Snapchat photos) can be copied, and are almost always stored on the platform’s servers. However, some networks are more open to sharing than others, and networks often make some things easier to share more widely (typically through sorting and recommendation algorithms) and add friction to make some things harder to share.

Because it’s persistent, digital content is mostly consumed asynchronously: we typically react or reply to something at a time other than when it’s posted, and reactions to our reactions will also come at a later, usually unpredictable time. This can make digital media hard to turn off, since a reaction – or a chance for us to respond to something – may come at any time.

Sample questions to ask:

• How did this work reach you? Was it because you are mutual friends with the maker, because you follow the maker, because someone else shared it with you, or because you found it in a different way? How did the architecture of the platform (such as a recommendation algorithm) influence how it was delivered to you?
• What might make it easier or harder to share this message?
• If you made the work, how did you share it? How did that influence how you made it?
• Was the work meant to be shared widely? If so, what did the maker do to encourage others to share it? If not, what did the maker do to try to limit people’s ability to share or copy it?

 

Digital media have unexpected audiencezs

Because digital media are networked and digital content is shareable, what you share online may be seen by people you didn’t intend or expect to see it. Your ability to control who sees what is limited: both content creators and traditional gatekeepers and distributors have much less power to control what happens to it once it’s posted. This can make it difficult to manage audiences, and there is always a risk of context collapse when what was intended for one audience is seen by another. As well, you may be sharing content that you’re not aware of with audiences you don’t know about, such as cookies and other tracking tools that record information about who you are and what you do when you visit a website.

The networked nature of digital media means that it is also easy for users to be unexpected audiences and see content that wasn’t intended for them – or that they didn’t want to see. Rather than seeking out content, frequently our task is now to limit what content we are exposed to. (In fact, young people are primarily concerned with avoiding upsetting content online rather than seeking it out.) Recommendation algorithms can also deliver unwanted or unexpected or unexpected content, which may sometimes include misinformation or hate material. Who is – and isn’t – shown what content can have serious impacts on opportunity (for instance, by showing a job ad to some people and not others), income (by offering a higher price based on what operating system you are using, for example), society (such as reinforcing stereotypes by training an algorithm on biased data) and liberty (subjecting some people to more surveillance than others, for example, or downranking particular kinds of content.)

Because digital media is networked, it also means that each of us is a node in the network, with the ability to share content with the people connected to us. This means that there is always an ethical aspect to what we do online – which demonstrates the connection between this concept and the next one.

Sample questions to ask:

• Who was the intended audience for the work? How did the intended audience influence how it was made? (For example, how would a photo you post for your friends to see be different from one for your parents, or a romantic partner?)
• How might the work be interpreted differently if it was seen by an audience other than the one it was meant for?
• Were you the intended audience for the work? If so, how did that affect how you responded to it? If not, how did the work reach you?
• How might the networks have made this work more or less likely to reach you?
• Which users or messages are whitelisted (exempted from being deleted, downranked or fact-checked) by default, and which are blacklisted?
• How might the creators or distributors of this work have made it more or less likely to reach you?
• What things are you not being shown as result of recommendation algorithms?
• What might happen if the work was seen by unexpected audiences, now or in the future?
• What responsibilities do you have as a sharer of networked content?

 

Interactions through digital media can have real impact

Being networked means that all digital media are, to at least a certain extent, interactive: we are never just passive viewers but always a part of what’s happening. That means that what we do has a real impact on other people, because we are actually interacting with them. We often respond to things online as though we are really there, but most of the cues that tell us how we and others feel are absent. One result of this can be empathy traps, features of networked interaction – such as a feeling of being anonymous, or the absence of cues such as tone of voice or facial expressions in the people we interact with – that prevent us from feeling empathy when we normally would, and these traps can make us forget that what we do online can have real consequences. For the same reasons, it can be very difficult to determine someone’s actual meaning and motivation when interacting with them online.

Partly because of this, and also because of the lack of physical presence online (we may not even entirely feel we’re “in” our bodies, as we’re usually sitting and immobile when using digital media), it’s easy to forget that laws, morals and rights still apply online. The norms and values of the online communities we’re part of can also affect our own personal norms and values, as the values of our offline communities do, but because we don’t always know how many people are in the community we are especially susceptible to the “majority illusion,” in which a small number of loud voices can seem like they’re speaking for the group. Taken together with the lowered barriers to publication discussed above, this can also mean that the people and images we interact with online impact us as much or more than images in traditional media because they are (or seem to be) our peers. The images of ourselves we create online have an extra impact on us because they embody who we imagine (or wish) ourselves to be.

But there are important positive aspects to this, as well. The interactive nature of networked media allows everyone, even youth, to be fully engaged citizens online, and to take part in shaping the norms and values of our online communities – and to use networked tools to make a difference in our offline communities.

Sample questions to ask:

• What are the norms and values of your online communities? Do I agree with them? If not, what can I do to shape them?
• What are the possible moral and ethical consequences of different online actions?
• How can we remind ourselves to feel empathy for people we’re interacting with online? What strategies can we use to moderate conflict?
• How can we use networked tools to make a difference in our online and offline communities?

 

Digital media experiences are shaped by the tools we use

One of the most fundamental insights of media literacy is that the form of a medium influences how we “read” or experience a text. While this remains true in digital media, the network effect means that the architecture of a platform – everything from the user interface we interact with to the algorithms that determine how it delivers content to us – affects not just the meaning and message of digital media but also our own behaviour when using them. These can be analyzed in terms of affordances (what a tool enables you to do) and defaults (what is easy and expected to do with it.) The two of these combine to create choice architectures that make some uses possible or easier, others harder or impossible, and steer the user’s behaviour[xxvii] by requesting, demanding, encouraging, discouraging, refusing and allowing certain actions.

Though it is possible to make “resistant” use of a networked tool – either by changing or “hacking” its affordances, or by using it in ways outside of its defaults – in general the vast majority of people adopt the default use; for this reason, defaults can be as (or more) important than affordances.There is, as a result, a constant tension between the user’s desires and the affordances of the platform: the less the platform was designed with you in mind, the greater the tension. Teens may choose to post casual photos on Snapchat and more formal ones on Instagram, for instance, based on how they see the two platforms serving their purposes differently, but they are also being influenced by the structure of those platforms: Snapchat, where photos are temporary by default, creates an expectation of being casual and “fun,” while Instagram’s persistent feed promotes the careful maintenance of a public-facing profile.

As the historian of science Melvin Kranzberg put it, different technologies are neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but neither are they neutral:[xxxi] they reflect the beliefs, unconscious biases and unquestioned assumptions of their creators. Sometimes these values will be consciously applied: if a platform’s designers consider freedom of speech their top priority, then protections from hate speech and harassment will probably be an afterthought at best – which will influence who feels free to speak and what kinds of conversations happen. But unconscious attitudes can be at play, too, such as an “engineering mindset” that sees no problem with showing different job listings for Black and White users, or with delivering an ever-narrower feed of news that you’re likely to agree with if that’s the most efficient and effective way to advertise to you. As is almost always the case, commercial considerations are also key: a platform that makes money from user engagement will naturally encourage interactions that produce the most intense engagement, no matter the content or tenor of those interactions.

Sample questions to ask:

• What tools were used to make and distribute a work? What tools are we using?
• Who made the tool? Who were the expected users? How did that influence its design?
• What are the tool’s affordances? What are its defaults? How do these combine to constrain, steer, and enable particular actions?
• What uses have people put the tool to that its makers didn’t anticipate? How do they change how it’s used?