Internet Literacy

Ted Naylor and Charlene Croft, with E. Dianne Looker
from May 2007

While issues of access to technology and connectivity infrastructure remain essential, it is also paramount that on top of connectivity we recognize that inclusive access does not end at being ‘connected’. Rather, inclusion and participation in the knowledge society is tied to social processes that are dynamic and complex and which vary across different socio-economic contexts.

To this end, we introduce and discuss the notion of ICT literacy. This concept provides an analytical approach that makes visible that there are important differences in use, skill levels and objectives in using ICTs throughout the social order, particularly across the key socio-economic sectors of governance, business, education and community. ICT literacy therefore provides the analytical link to understanding how to navigate and use the information highway in ways that cuts experiences of users in different ways; people form literacies with meaning that are socially and culturally mediated. An equitable knowledge society is indeed a connected one, yet is also one based on acknowledging that a plurality of ICT literacies exist; there are not ‘dumb’ users of technology and ‘smart’ users of technology when considering how individuals employ ICTs in ways that matter to their lives, circumstances and needs.

From a policy and practice perspective, we believe this approach helpfully moves us away from the prevailing tendency to understand ICT literacy as a singular, hierarchy ranked, uniform set of competencies with computers or technologies that can be measured, standardized and taught.

The Knowledge Economy

It is now generally acknowledged that Canada, similar to other advanced social democracies, is becoming a knowledge based economy. This shift is premised on the accentuation of “knowledge” as the most important factor of production, surpassing land, labour, and capital based on the diffusion of information communication technologies (ICTs) throughout the social order (Parayil 2005).

From a federal policy and programme perspective, Canada has aggressively positioned itself as a leading proponent of the knowledge economy, making massive investments in infrastructure and programs based on the understanding that “Canada needs a highly skilled and educated workforce to remain competitive and sustain its prosperity in an increasingly global and knowledge-based economy” (Berger et al. 2007).

The Knowledge Society

While there has been a great deal of focus on creating an advantageous climate for growing the knowledge economy, considerably less focus has been put into considering how we might ensure the development of an equitable knowledge society. In broad terms, a knowledge society centre’s around the social capabilities to identify, process, transform, disseminate and use information to build and apply knowledge for human development (UNESCO).

However, while issues of access to technology and connectivity infrastructure remain essential, it is also paramount that on top of connectivity we recognize that inclusive access does not end at being ‘connected’. Rather, inclusion and participation in the knowledge society is tied to social processes that are dynamic and complex and which vary across different socio-economic contexts.

Indeed, scholars of the ‘digital divide’ now point out that this divide cannot be reduced to just technological access, “solved” through “simple technological fixes” (Parayil 2005) because connectivity and access to infrastructures are not a sufficient basis to develop a knowledge society based on equitable inclusion and participation (UNESCO).

In both cases, the concept of the knowledge society and economy hinges on access to computing infrastructures – while government policy and programme has begun to successfully conquer the ‘digital divide’ in terms of access to technology and connectivity infrastructure it has not yet sufficiently addressed the digital divide in terms of ensuring adequate levels of literacy with ICTs.

ICT literacy addresses the post-connectivity question of, what now? For those with access to the ubiquitous information highway, ICT literacy provides the analytical link to understanding how to navigate and use the information highway in ways that cuts experiences of users in different ways. This approach makes visible that there are important differences in use, skill levels and objectives in using ICTs throughout the social order and that these differences should not, and do not, necessarily follow along a hierarchal ordering of ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ skills within the social realm – there are not ‘dumb’ users of technology and ‘smart’ users of technology when considering how individuals employ ICTs in ways that matter to their lives, circumstances and needs.

ICT literacy

While there are many definitions of ICT literacy within the scholarly literature (see Bawden 2001 for a review), ICT literacy is generally taken as an “umbrella term” that attempts to describe a new set of literacies which have emerged as a result of a broader shift to an “information society” and the accompanying technologies embedded in that shift. As Warschauer (in press: 16) concludes, “Today, the social, economic, and technological transformations are again aligned to bring about major changes in literacy practices.”

Currently, the prevailing tendency in understanding ICT literacy is to understand it as a singular, standardized set of competencies with computers or technologies. In the tradition of traditional literacy, we then find those agents and organizations wishing “to define ‘it’, to teach it, measure it, assess it, and remediate it – in a word, to universalize and standardize it (Lankshear and Knobel 2005).” If you don’t have ‘it’, then you better get ‘it’ because you will need ‘it’ in the future, goes the rationale. Within the education sector, for example, this approach is ensconced within traditional curriculum programs that understand ICT literacy as a teachable and unified set of skills to be learned. However, evidence from our study, among others, suggests that ICT literacy should be more accurately understood across a broad range of competencies and skills, and that individuals use ICTs in ways that matter to them, and not necessarily along a fixed continuum of ‘advancing’ skills.

Our understanding of ICT literacy therefore differs from the normative understandings of ICT literacy by recognizing that there are social and cultural elements which draw our attention to understanding literacy in different ways which vary in different social contexts (Simpson 2005).  Freire (2000) describes literacy as “an active phenomenon, deeply linked to personal and cultural identity. Its power lies not in a received ability to read and write, but rather in an individual’s capacity to put those skills to work in shaping the course of his or her own life.” In this context, ICT literacy conceptualizes a whole host of social practices of how people engage in making meaning “mediated by texts that are produced, received, distributed, exchanged, etc., via digital codification” (Lankshear and Knobel 2005: 9). People form literacies with meaning that are socially and culturally mediated, which is not the result from some universally learned skill or technique.

With this in mind, we would suggest four major socio-economic sectors where ICT literacy matters; it matters in the sense that while literacies with ICTs will inevitably vary among individuals, these sectors continue to form the basis of the knowledge society. Therefore a consideration of literacy with ICTs among these sectors is paramount to ensure equitable inclusion in the knowledge society.

* Governance

It is important to consider ICT literacy in relation to its significance around equitable participation within the public domain. The existence of asymmetries in democratic and governing practices in Canada is now well established. In this context, ICTs are increasingly playing an important role in inclusion around policy formulation and decision-making processes (Dale and Naylor 2006). Civic engagement processes are increasingly found on-line, and the communication possibilities created by ICTs allow the public to express itself more immediately and effectively than previously possible, helping citizens reinvigorate public talk and dialogue in entirely new ways, and with entirely new results (Dale and Naylor 2006).

Aside from ICTs contribution to civic engagement, ICTs are also now crucial to evolving notions of alternative service delivery mechanisms within government. In efforts to become more efficient and effective, many government services are now found online (http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr). The rationale is that the public can be better served by making these services available online, circumventing the traditional bureaucratic ‘silos and stovepipes’ found across departments, and offering more immediate and better services to citizens.

* Business

Simply connecting business to the Internet isn’t sufficient for ensuring effective use of the advantages offered by ICTs. In a study of rural New Zealand small businesses, the authors recommend that human capability play the key role in their E-Commerce strategy as a priority for the Government in the drive for economic transformation. To this end, among a host of recommendations, the authors direct the government to facilitate skill training for small business by ensuring the education sector focuses on ICT literacy, and that the government helps the private sector “build broader ICT literacy and capability in the community including rural areas” (Al-Qirim and Corbett 2003). In this way, ICT literacy becomes positioned as the key competitive edge for businesses once they have gained connectivity – the better literacy skills with ICTs on behalf of businesses and owners, the more competitive they become within a global marketplace where ICT literacy is presumed to be the entry fee to compete.

* Education

Canada requires a highly skilled and educated workforce to ensure it is competitive and to sustain its long-term prosperity in a knowledge-based economy (Berger et al. 2007).

At the same time, it is widely believed that students who have difficulty converting written information to knowledge are at a critical disadvantage in today’s world (Sim 2006). ICT literacy is therefore a desirable and necessary form of human capital, particularly in relation to an increasing emphasis on an individual’s success within the context of a knowledge economy.

Within the field of economics, there is also a growing theoretical consensus that the driving force behind economic growth is technological advancement; an assertion which has clearly found its way into educational policy formulation, and curriculum reform and practice for many governments, including Canada. As Milton (2005: 10) contends, “The early drivers of levels of investment in ICT in education have not changed.  ICT skills are a key factor in both individuals’ success in the labour market and in national economic growth.” So while connectivity and access remain important obstacles within education, obstacles to creating literacy with ICTs within the education sector is the key to ensuring all groups have access to tapping the potential created by connectivity within Nova Scotia, particularly those groups that have been historically marginalized (Naylor and Frank, forthcoming).

*   Community

Rural connectivity and literacy with that connectivity represents an important development in the historical use of ICTs to foster and enhance civic participation within the public domain (Dale and Naylor 2006). In this context, the use of the ICTs to expand dialogue, literacy and discourse are taken as new features of a potentially democratic process within the public sphere since to a large extent they seek to involve different groups employing different techniques to achieve different objectives.

Rural communities worldwide are now facing formidable challenges: significant demographic urban growth, with associated problems of economic and population losses in many rural and resource-dependent communities, with associated job loss and community decline; and meeting the basic necessities for clean air, clean water, energy, transportation, land use, housing, jobs, health, waste disposal, etc. Such problems are dynamically interconnected and cannot be dealt with in isolation; they require new approaches, frameworks, partnerships and tools to address them in an integrative fashion (Dale and Onyx, in press). Key to facing these challenges is the capacity of communities to coordinate and lead discussions around these issues, potentially contributing to a rapid development of social capital.

The emergent tools of Web 2.0, for example, suggest the importance of a set of communication tools that rural communities might adopt as strategies that cut across the rural socio-economic experience. It also highlights the critical need to address a plurality of literacies that need to be considered in relation to connectivity.

Internet Web 2.0 applications are “those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated services that gets better the more people use it, creating network effects through an ‘architecture of participation’ (O’Reilly 2005). In this way, Web 2.0 first assumes access to web based infrastructure but from there departs from the current understanding of the internet as a single entry point to access more information or as static communications link. Rather Web 2.0 is centered on a model of knowledge generation and production by communities.

As rural communities continue to face the challenges noted above, they require the tools to mobilize not only their civic voices and participation but their commerce and economies; and without the literacy to embrace and adapt the evolving architecture of the knowledge society and economy they risk becoming marginalized as technology ‘have-not’s’.

tangled webs of the brave new world

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen – And keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again – And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin – And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’ – For the loser now will be later to win – For the times they are a-changin‘

For the past three days I’ve had that friggin’ song in my head.  And most definitely, it has been Bob Dylan’s version of the song.  It’s so stuck I often find myself walking down the street singing it fairly loudly, and upon recognizing that, I find myself wanting to burst on out into it… all theatrical and shit.

I love being a citizen of Now.  Observing these structurally shaking instances of history.

Citizens of Iran, speaking out against their theocracy.  The Women of Iran, finding their voices.  The Net Generation of Iran, fighting violence with information-communication technologies.  Amazing.  I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the results of this one.  Unfortunately our attention spans here in the West are so short, especially the media’s attention span.  Also unfortunately democracy always comes bundled with bureaucracy and it is possible that the institution has far more power to drag the recount process out.  I suspect the Iran saga will be anti-climatic.  They will do the recount, and the numbers won’t change.  What then?  The citizens will have to accept it.  Just as US citizens did in their 2000 election … and in the end, they didn’t even get their recount.  The Supreme Court decided… much like the Supreme Overlord will.

Unless, of course, the recount happens and the numbers do change… what will happen then?  I have no idea.

I am ultimately convinced that if Obama had not won in November, we would have seen a similar uprising in the US.  I know it is a highly theoretical thing to say, but I stand by it.  What’s happening in Iran is a smackdown of cultures.  What happened in the 2008 election was also a smackdown of cultures.  If John McCain won in a landslide, or even by a narrow margin, there would have been protests and allegations of voter fraud en masse.  In 2008, the outrage would have expanded past an audience of election wonking observers like it did in 2000 and 2004.  You would have seen these scenes from Tehran in Washington.

God I’m happy that didn’t happen.  I am increasingly impressed with Barack on a daily basis.  He is governing exactly how I hoped he would.  And, he is still using all those social media tools that got him elected to reach out to his constituents.

Though, when I read about a City in Montana that requires you submit all of you Web 2.0 logins and passwords, I think… WTF America?  Background check takes on a whole new meaning when you have to start opening up your cyberlife to your employers.  That is the depth approach to job screening.

Then I start thinking about the Bill just introduced in Canadian Parliament about intercepting Internet transmissions and gathering user information from ISPs and I think WTF Canada?   “Twenty-first century technology calls for 21st-century tools,” said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (via CBC).  Indeed they do Minister Nicholson.

The Internet is blowing it all up.  Thrusting us into a brave new world whether we want to go or not.  We early adopters are all quite giddy about it.  Once labelled the “cyber-utopianists” it is clear the skeptics are now paying attention.  And jumping on board where they can.  The revolution could never be televised because it must be an interactive, reflexive process for it to be real.

But, now that the Internets’ transformative potential is very clear, it becomes scary.  Because Now, it is no longer theory… and you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be people trying to make their top dollars by attempting to exploit the technology for profit, for security, and for measuring an individual’s moral value by snooping around their Web 2.0 pages.

Now is, indeed an interesting and exciting time.

The line it is drawn the curse it is cast – The slow one now will later be fast – As the present now will later be past – The order is rapidly fadin’ – And the first one now will later be last – For the times they are a-changin’

Twitter FAQ for Sociologists…

What is Twitter anyway?

Twitter is a social networking site where the main activity is sending out and receiving 140 character (max) information bursts (called Tweets or Chirps).  People sign-up for membership using an email address and choose a unique username.  After disclosing of a small amount of personal information you are given your own Twitter profile.

Every profile is one page, and consists of a photo (if the user chooses to upload one), a 140 character “About Me” blurb, and if you have entered it, where in the world you are.  Your profile is also a record of your Tweets, in the order in which they have been entered, with the most recent last.

Where you “friend” people on other social sites like Myspace and Facebook, the social part of Twitter emerges as you “follow” other people’s tweets, and as people follow yours.  Your Twitter “home” then, becomes the real-time sending and receiving of tweets between and among you and those that you are following.

If you use Facebook, think of it as the Status Update feature isolated and turned into a social networking site on its own.

What kinds of information are being sent and received over Twitter?

The substance of the information bursts fall in a number of different categories:

• Mundane events (what I’m eating for breakfast or whether I’m going to get a bath or a shower)
• Personal news (where I’m going to have a beer or whether or not my best friend is pregnant)
• Making Plans with Followers (let’s go have a beer together to talk about our friend who is pregnant)
• Interesting Internet Finds (external links to articles, blogs, YouTube videos, pictures)
• Self-promotion (external links to your own blogs, YouTube videos, pictures, website, creative work)
• Citizen journalism (coverage and promotion of the local community events and news)
• Mediated journalism (external links to, interaction with and commentary on mainstream news)
• Commercial (purely service or product driven information with the intention of promotion)

Who uses Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking site predominantly used by individuals who are high-level communicators and organzations/businesses who want to reach those communicators.   Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is a good lens through which to view Twitter users.  He talks about the Connectors, the Mavens and the Salesmen as being the three types of individuals which start and spread what he calls “social epidemics.”

Connectors are individuals who know lots of people and who use those connections to their advantage.  Connectors are people who have invested in social, cultural and identity capital and who can convert those intangible resources into pretty much whatever they decide to.

Mavens are the senders and receivers of information.  They are the people who always have the pulse on the good deals and breaking stories of the day.  Mavens are the trendsetters and the people who you turn to to find out about this thing or that.  Citizen Journalists are types of Mavens, often scooping the mainstream media in reporting “from the ground”

Salesmen are the persuaders of society.  They are the people who dedicate a great deal of their lives to selling people on their ideas.

These three types of people form the Golden Triangle of trends. “Mavens are the databanks.  They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they spread it… Salesmen [have] the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced.”  (p.70, The Tipping Point).

But there is a fourth type of Twitter user, which I will call Leachers.  Leachers are passive Twitter users who do not tweet themselves, but who set up profiles simply to follow users and extract information from them for whatever purposes they may have.  For the most part Leachers exploit Twitter and the information being provided to them from the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen.  They only use half of the application.  They take information without giving anything in return.

How Many People Use Twitter?

According to Mashable, In April 2009, it was estimated that 7.4% of adult Internet users had a Twitter account.  That’s about 12.1 million people.  How many of these are active Twitter accounts with real people behind them is probably considerably less, but this is a problem with measuring any social metrics on social networking sites.

What about Twitter Penetration into Real Life?

Typically, when patterns of technology penetration are reported and analysed, they are done so in terms of number of users, which was answered in the above statistics.  However, the type of penetration discussed here has more to do with how this virtual platform influences and penetrates the everyday life of its users.

Because of the simplicity of the platform it makes it extremely friendly for use on any mobile phone with web capability.  Whereas Facebook there are multiple pages and multiple possibilities for surfing, the Twitter feed is the only screen you need to use the site.  Twitter mobile is fully functional, because it has such a simple function.

One of the concerns with this, of course, is that heavy Twitter users will often exhibit behaviours consistent with work-a-holics, or information addicts.  Non-users will often complain that their friends who have embedded Twitter into their daily lives are missing out on the here and now, and they hate having to compete for the attention of users.

Twitter penetration has also surpassed the personal and infiltrated the institutional.  Institutions, which have been the traditional gatekeepers and disseminators of public information are jumping in the tree for their own purposes.  Politicians, libraries, universities, governments, police, celebrities, the media, corporations – all the institutions who have things to say to people – are  chirping their way into the collective consciousness of the Tweeps (or Twits if you prefer) who would find that information useful.

Why has Institutionalized Media Become so Obsessed with Twitter?

Because Twitter is a social networking site which attracts the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen; the mainstream media has become increasingly interested in hopping on board this social epidemic.  It has gotten to the point where many mainstream media outlets are using Twitter as a source for their stories, which perpetuates it’s perceived value by the users because it can create a direct line from them to the mass media.  The Trending Topics feature (a keyword top 10 of what people are tweeting about) assists the media in keeping the pulse on what the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen are talking about (it should be noted that this is also why market research firms are so interested in Twitter).

In this way, the mainstream media co-opts Twitter as a form of unpaid journalism.  The Twitter user becomes a Prosumer (from George Ritzer) – the Producer and the Consumer of “news” mediated by the mainstream media.

Why is Twitter Such a Valuable Social Tool?

Many of the social benefits of Twitter can be found in the literature around social networking sites in general.  Feelings of connectivity can lead to stronger social cohesion within cultural and geographic communities.  Because the majority of content on Twitter is user-generated, the information does not have to pass through the same vetting processes.  There are still vetting processes though, but they emerge in the form of social consensus as to what information is valid, or worth repeating (or in this case, retweeting).

Some, like Silicone Valley ex-pat Andrew Keen, are concerned with these processes of user-generated forms of culture, lamenting the death of the expert as a dangerous evolution of western civilization.  But this concern only holds water if you fundamentally believe that culture should be guarded and distributed through institutionalized gatekeepers: mainstream media, academics, admen, studied artists and record companies to name a few.

A local example of the social value of Twitter can be seen upon recollection of the Spryfield fires.  Those Haligonians who were using Twitter at the time were sending and recieving information about the state of the fires much faster than any local media outlet was.  It was the efficient delivery of important information which was personalized and unvetted, therefore it contained an inherent unmeasurable value to it which is often absent in reporting from the anchor desk.

A global example of the social value of Twitter emphasizes democratization, and information which has circumvented the institution.  This example is actually playing out as I type this, in the highly contested Iranian election.  Where state controlled media is finding it difficult to control the message and the information coming out of the country.  Even their attempts to block Internet traffic has failed, as global activists are facilitating external communication by tweeting proxy server addresses for those who might not be able to otherwise connect to the Internet.

Is Twitter for Me?

Well, the only way to find that out is by going on and trying it.  Chances are that if you consider yourself to be either a Connector, a Maven or a Salesman, Twitter would definitely be worth checking out.  Unless you are a celebrity, or have many friends and connections to people already using Twitter, it takes a while to collect a following, and really understand how it works.  Ultimately, people will follow you if you are tweeting things that are relevant to them (another benefit of Twitter is the positive identity/idea reinforcement as more and more people start following you).

It is important to remember that the thing that makes Twitter so valuable and meaningful for people is the interactive aspect of it.  The more you use it, and interact with it, the more you understand it’s value.

I think, though, overall with Twitter, we need to rethink the whole media paradigm.  The old “Medium is the message” adage becomes flipped to think about  “the Message as the Medium”, with the “viewers” flipping to the “users” and where “content” matters more than “form”.

Do you have more sociologically related questions about Twitter? Post them in the comments here or tweet me @statsgirl.

Another round of policy revisions for The Facebook

I’ve been thinking about Facebook’s privacy policy for a while now… trying to encourage users to maximize their privacy settings, and informing them of their rights when they upload content to the site… In fact, I was writing so much about Facebook back in 2007 that I thought I had said all there was to say about it.  Then, this morning, when I woke up and logged on to check in with all my pals, I noticed one friend’s update said something about Facebook violating our “rights” to privacy.

After a discussion with my husband about the semantic implications and inappropriate nature of using the words “privacy rights” and “Facebook” in the same sentance, a quick google revealed the probable source of the status update.  Apparently, Facebook wants to own your Facebook Data Double even if you decide to commit Facebook suicide.  So even after you disable your profile… even if you go that extra step and send Facebook an email requesting to have your profile deleted… Facebook will not remove the little bits of yourself that you leave behind on people’s walls, in people’s inboxes, or in the massive consumer databases Facebook investors have come to rely on for those great big bonuses and market research.  But, they promise not to fuck with your privacy settings… so I guess that’s something…

The policy shift is causing such a ruckus, Facebook is on the defensive.  But ultimately, they probably aren’t that worried about losing users because come on, let’s face it, Zuckerberg has achieved his goal of making Facebook the Windows for Web 2.0… we are hooked now, whether we like it or not.

The way Facebook is implementing this new poilicy is unfair.  Users who signed up under the original user agreement and are now being informed that it is being replaced with a new user agreement that they don’t get a chance to accept or decline.  One which sees you give up the rights to the “soul” of your Facebook Data Double.  It seems to me that The Facebook can easily quiet the protesters by simply giving them the option to continue on as Facebook users, or not.  Because I am fairly certain most users would simply do what they did the first time they signed up… click “I accept” without even reading the damn fineprint.

Frig, even those who are well-versed in The Facebook’s policies will click “I accept” without blinking an eye, because ultimately, Facebook is such an important part of our lives.

For everyone who is so up in arms about this new policy shift, I ask, what’s the big deal?  So Facebook chooses to clog up it’s servers with outdated information that you didn’t care about posting in the first place.  Sure Facebook will still have a record that you posted “25 things” about yourself on January 30, 2009… but who cares?

If you are worried, like I once was, about Facebook selling your information to market research firms so that they can devise updated tactics of psychological warfare in their advertising schemes… this little shift shouldn’t bother you that much… because it’s all so fluid these days… data from last week is so last year.  If the Facebook data mining practices while you are a user don’t disturb you, then why should you get anxious about how they use your practically useless data after you are gone?

In the end, and in my interpretation, this is not a new privacy issue… As a user of Facebook, you should expect no more privacy in the conversations you have with your friends on their walls and in the other public spaces of Facebook than you would having the same conversations with those friends in a pub, or on the bus… Besides… there are far greater Internet Privacy Concerns on the horizon for Canadians…