Reflection on Week 4: Digital Literacy Frameworks
This week we looked at Digital Literacy and the importance of being able to appropriately access, analyze, and construct knowledge from digital information.
Through my exploration of The B.C. Post-Secondary Digital Literacy Framework there were two things that I chose to take a deeper look into…
First, something that stuck with me from the digital literacy frame work was this passage:
” A person’s access to adequate hardware and software is required for developing digital literacy. However, not all people are in B.C. have access to hardware and software, nor are included in digital or online environments” (Sanders & Scanlon, 2021).
This passage is important because it shows barriers with rising technology and abilities to access it. I wanted to explore this on a bigger scale and to get a deeper look at this I found an article that explores these barriers.
The article speaks on how these barriers to digital hardware are problematic and can even be seen as a human rights issue. “Millions of people in the USA still have no home access to high-speed Internet” and “Low-income, people of color, older, Native Americans, and rural residents” are especially affected by the divide (Sanders & Scanlon, 2021).
After reading the article, I see that a big factor contributing to the divide is the inability to access or afford broadband highspeed internet. This can be because of problems such as financial, educational, technological or being in a rural or marginalised community.
We can see this digital divide, perpetuating “social, economic, and political disparities” .
Second, a part of the digital literacy framework that I believe is very important is around information literacy and understanding that information can be false and biased. It is clear that many companies and publishers spread misinformation and I want to know what leads people to believing such information. This article below had significant findings:
The study found that “users mostly tend to select and share content related to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest”. Also, that users are more likely to consume information that comes from, or is presented to, like-minded people of which are connected in “homogeneous, polarized clusters”, that share similar views (Del Vicario et al., 2016).
This shows that people are likely to believe information that follows what they already believe and what is similar to those that they relate themselves to. We see that digital literacy is affected by the digital divide and inequalities to accessing and adopting technologies. For those who have access, it is critical to acknowledges ones own biases but also the potential biases within the information they are reading.
References
Del Vicario, M., Bessi, A., Zollo, F., Petroni, F., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., Stanley, H. E., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2016). The spreading of misinformation online. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(3), 554–559. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113
Sanders, C. K., & Scanlon, E. (2021). The digital divide is a human rights issue: Advancing social inclusion through social work advocacy. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 6(2), 130–143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-020-00147-9