In search of a term ? Defining digital literacy in the 21st century

GONZÁLEZ LÓPEZ LEDESMA, ALEJO EZEQUIEL

Congreso; 12th International Association for Research in L1 Education Conference; 2019

ARLE - Universidad NOVA Lisboa

Many scholars across the world have studied the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to access and use digital media. This field of study has become known as ?digital literacy? or ?digital literacies?. Yet as digital texts have proliferated and evolved, there has been much conjecture over what it means to be ?digitally literate?. Since its first use in the mid 1990s, the term ?digital literacy? has been contested and challenged. This paper analyses how the term digital literacy has been conceptualised and applied by scholars across the world. To do this, we analyse the most referenced publications on digital literacy in three different contexts: the English-speaking context; the Spanish-speaking context; and the Scandinavian context. Searches were made in Google Scholar using the term ?digital literacy?. The term digital competence was also used when searching for articles in the Spanish and Scandinavian contexts, since the term is widely used interchangeably with digital literacy. A critical discourse analysis (Fairclough,1995) of these articles was conducted, followed up by a thematic analysis across articles in all three contexts. The findings are presented in three categories within each context: digital literacy as concept; digital literacy as educational initiative; and issues and tensions. Our findings begin with Gilster?s landmark text ?Digital Literacy? (1998), tracing how the term has been translated and applied across the world. Across all three contexts digital literacy refers to something broader than digital competence, digital skills or digital proficiency (Bawden, 2001; Area Moreira, 2008). We identify the key challenges and tensions emerging from the field and the implications this has had on digital literacy education. For example, two issues that emerged across all three contexts were the ?vagueness? of the term digital literacy (Buckingham, 2010; Säljö, 2012), as well as confusion over how it related to other relevant disciplines, such as media literacy, information literacy and computer literacy (Bawden, 2001; Erstad, 2010). The paper concludes with suggestions for a future agenda for digital literacy research. Quien figura como único y primer expositor de este trabajo es en realidad el tercer expositor, junto con las autoras Luci Pangrazio (Deakin University, Australia) y Anna-Lena Godhe (Malmö University, Sweden), quienes no pudieron ser incorporadas al formulario por problemas del SIGEVA.