Driving to northern Finland for holiday with my daughter. She’s playing with my phone, reading what me and my friends have been posting in one of my Whatsapp-groups, laughing at our “middle-age ways” of writing. Soon she´s writing in my group and making a joke about writing the way she would with her friends, finding it amusing that her style of writing is not understandable to my friends. She also makes a comment on the way me and my friends uses emojis, reflecting on the fact that our way of using them would be insulting among her friends…
When trying to define digital litteracies for this topic, I found Doug Belshaws (2014) ebook interesting, as he sees that defining what digital litteracies are is difficult since it is a concept that is both context bound and ambiguous. Instead of a definition of the term he proposes that digital litteracies could be seen as consisting of eight elements, existing in various degrees depending on the context where a definition of digital litteracies is needed. The eight elements of digital litteracies according to Doug Belshaw (2014, p. 42-45) are Cultural, Cognitive, Constructive, Communicative, Confident, Creative, Critical and Civic.
The cultural element is intertwined with the understanding of context. The cultural element of digital litteracies is knowing the norms and habits used in different digital enviroments and to have the ability to move between different digital “platforms” and easily adjust to the different habits and norms in them (Belshaw, 2014, p.45-47)
Could my example with my daughter reflecting on the differences in how parents communicate in Whatsapp as to how she communicates with her friends in Snapp stand as an example of the cultural element of digital litteracies? I think that even though Doug Belshaw defines the cultural element perhaps more as having to do with the different norms in different digital tools I do also see a connection between understanding the generational difference in using emojis and style of writing as a aspect of the cultural element of digital litteracies.
In an educational setting it is important to understand that even though young people are digital natives in one digital platform it does not mean that they necessary are that in another. For example understanding the culture in a formal, workplace related context is somewhat different than that of a social context in Snapp (Belshaw, 2014 p.46-47).
These elements are all important aspects of digital litteracies, though they have a different meaning in different contexts. The definition is temporary; as the context changes, so does the definition (Belshaw, 2014, p. 58-59)
Source:
Belshaw, Doug, 2014. The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. [pdf] Self-published. Available from: https://dougbelshaw.com/essential-elements-book.pdf. Accessed: 23.4.2022.
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