twopointouch

I am just back from the Digital Media Literacy Forum Summit hosted by Channel 4.

Most of the people there - from the worlds of media, education and policy making - agreed that there was some need for action on digital media literacy (I guess none of us would have turned up, otherwise) but there were some interesting tensions between the participants about what that might entail, who it is for and why we need it.

This debate is often framed in terms of fear of and for children. Our society is at once terrified of our youngsters and terrified for them. The Finnish multimurderer yesterday was predictably dubbed the ‘YouTube Killer’ by the Mail and Telegraph in this morning’s editions, Ewan McIntosh pointed out. As though his video posts were somehow a reason for the outrage. Adults fret about the amount of time kids spend on the Internet, talking in code. Think about stories about "teenagers …being groomed to be suicide bombers," or the countless stories about hoodies. (Almost every teenage boy in the UK wears a hooded top, yet ‘hoodies’ are framed as a social menace in the popular press here). The other image of children on the Internet is diametrically opposite - the child as victim, as the potential victim of an army of ’sick paedos’, who for some reason, have forsaken parks and schools, and other places where children might actually physically appear, for the Internet.

A lot of the way some sections of society think about children and the Internet is actually about adults and the Internet. Things that are threatening or frightening get projected onto children as a way of distancing ourselves from that.

This is about adults not understanding the Internet, not understanding teens, and demonising both as a consequence. The obvious contradictions in this view are neatly ignored.

Matt Locke made some great points about the need or lack of need for digital media literacy. He argued that the reason that people run into problems on the Internet is because the technology doesn’t work well enough yet. Most people actually have a very good understanding of the protocols and rules that govern internet communications. That there are basically six spaces on the ‘net and we already know how they should run:

1. Private spaces. For 1:1 communications, like email and private chats.
2. Group spaces: for a defined group with a certain interest to talk about that interest. Like newsgroups or forums, also Facebook and Bebo.
3. Public spaces: where you publish whatever you’re producing for the world to share. Most blogs and sites like YouTube fall into this category.
4. Performance spaces: online games come here, maybe some more competitive social media spaces, too.
5. Participation spaces: where a common goal is negotiated publically between individuals, e.g. eBay, Threadless, MySociety.
6. Watching spaces: because not everyone wants to be taking part all the time.

The problems occur because our current technological renditions of these spaces are not advanced, nuanced or simple enough. Private communications fall into the public arena. Commercial entities enter our groups unwanted. This isn’t about our understanding of the medium; what causes problems is the medium’s inability to provide an adequate service to fulfil the roles we demand of it.

So… digital media literacy. Is it kids or adults who need it the most? Not sure, but start with Paul Dacre, wherever it ends up. What does it entail? One delegate, from the National Media Museum, made the point that issues with online media and publishing can largely be addressed without knowing anything about code, codecs, XHTML, MP3s or film editing. A big issue is ‘when is it fair?’ - when is it fair to share a piece of video you’ve taken on your phone with friends or the public, for example? The answer to that has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with experience and moral insight. That’s a very valid point and general teaching from parents and the formal education system still has a huge role to play, as redundant as they may feel if they fail to master iMovie. Another huge issue for me is whether anyone is ready to start delivering digital media literacy lessons that are sufficiently distinct from former understandings of mass media (e.g. Williams, McLuhan, Althusser, Eagleton, Hall). The theorisation of personalised, syndicated, personally-produced media is still very much in its infancy. We have our Marx and Engels, perhaps, but not our Volosinov or Gramsci.