Network Literacies

The concept of literacy

Think of a student who enters the school library seeking a book. They first consult the catalogue, searching by author name and title, but have no luck. Next they ask help from the librarian, who confirms that the book isn’t there, but can help the student find other, related material using a subject search. As a result our student is now armed with a Call number and while locating the book on the shelf finds two other useful titles nearby. She takes all three books to the counter, “borrows” them and that evening at home opens the first.

She notes the title of the book, publication details, and the editor’s name. Perusing the table of contents, she finds the two chapters she believes relevant and marks their pages in the book with some paper bookmarks. Later, after she’s done some reading, she’ll copy direct quotes into her workbook, being careful to note what page each quote comes from.
This example describes print literacy. Not the print literacy that is ordinarily described as literacy in general (reading and writing) but a literacy that expresses a much deeper understanding of the implications of what it means to be a participant, even a peer, within a print defined and governed information economy. If we consider the literacies that this student has used, we can begin to see what these look like, allow, and how deeply ingrained they are. We can then use a similar approach to think about just what a ‘network’ literacy (or literacies) might be, require, and allow.

What is network literacy?

To be network literate is not the same as, or at least not equal to, being computer literate -in the same way that we can see that being print literate implies considerably more than just being able to read and write. Network literacy is, in a nutshell, being able to participate as a peer within the emerging knowledge networks that are now the product of the Internet, and to have as ‘deep’ an understanding of the logics or protocols of these networks as we do of print. This does not mean that you need to understand the intricacies of programming and other computer miscellanea (that would be like needing to know the intimate language and history of typography in order to read and write), but that an understanding of some general principals about the properties and qualities of these networks will allow you to successfully use them (for example knowing that there are typefaces and fonts).

The most basic quality of network literacy is recognising that content and its containers, whether web pages, blog posts, photos, video or any other media type, are distributed across the network, and that we weave these together very easily using simple protocols that were developed to allow ‘inter’ and ‘intra’ communication between different sorts of Internet services. The paradigmatic shift that this represents in relation to what I have described as book knowledge is twofold. The first is that the parts remain as parts at all times, so it is not simply the ‘cut and paste’ operation that is the basis of earlier digital practices. The second is that, in contributing my content to these services, others have access to my material (if I desire), in the same way that I have access to theirs. Through such sharing, the distinction between consuming and creating content dissolves so, unlike books in network literacy, we become peers in the system, and indeed to be ‘good’ at network literacies is to contribute as much as it is to consume.

In practice, this means that I might read something online that is relevant to my teaching. I will write about this in my blog, providing a link to this content. I will also bookmark this site via my del.icio.us account so that I can find it again and so that others may also find it. Meanwhile, I’ve also added some academic references to CiteULike, and I know my students and others can get this information because each service provides custom RSS feeds that can be subscribed to. Next, I move two photographs from my mobile phone to Flickr, one of which I’ll be publishing into my blog and the other will be shared with some colleagues for a paper we’re writing together. The video of my baby will also move from my phone to be published via YouTube into my blog. I’ll then update all the RSS feeds I subscribe to, paying particular attention to any new references from CiteULike and adding any relevant essays found to my library from relevant journal archives. I skim all of my student’s blogs and reblog relevant research posts so that all of these are collected into one location for these students (and others) to use in their research projects.

This is not an imaginary description of what my academic work day might look like in a few years, it is my usual working day now. While it is easy to read the above description as little more than an odd geek patois (which it can so easily and often become), it is useful to keep in mind that what I described above is no more complex than what the student did in using the library and its books, and is clearly a key mode of intellectual activity online. This is the nitty gritty of being a creative knowledge worker, a member of what Mackenzie Wark describes as the new ‘hacker class’, and forms network literacy.