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Abstract

Many scholars across the world have studied the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to use digital media. Yet as digital texts have proliferated and evolved, there has been much conjecture over what it means to be ‘digitally literate’. As literacy researchers from Australia, Sweden and Argentina we are concerned with the drive to standardise definitions of ‘digital literacy’ despite notable differences in the cultural politics of education in each country. This paper analyses how the term digital literacy has been conceptualised and applied by scholars in these three language contexts. To do this, we analyse the most cited publications on digital literacy in the English-speaking; Scandinavian; and Spanish-speaking contexts. In the analysis the variety of definitions across and within each context, the key tensions and challenges that emerge and the implications for digital literacy education are explored. Our findings reveal that similar tensions and challenges exist in all three contexts, however, the path to resolution varies given contextual differences. The article concludes with suggestions for educational research that acknowledges and advocates the need for local conceptualisations of digital literacies in increasingly globalised educational systems.

Keywords

Alfabetización bildung digital literacies literacy research socio-cultural literacies

Introduction

The digitalisation of everyday life has had significant implications for education. Given the recent proliferation of digital devices and educational software, schools and educators are still grappling with how to integrate technologies into the curriculum and prepare students for their (digital) futures. Amidst these concerns, “digital literacy” has emerged as a key concept to help educators, researchers and educational bureaucrats make sense of the competing demands on schools and students in a digital society.

As it was first defined back in the late 1990s, digital literacy refers to “the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide variety of sources when it is presented via computers” and, particularly, through the medium of the internet (Gilster, in Pool, 1997: 6). While this definition provided a useful starting point, digital texts and practices have become more complex. For example, the rise of mobile media, particularly in the developing world (see Pearce, 2013), is just one example of how diverse and divergent digital practices are. As proved by studies on vernacular practices with technology (Dussel et al., 2013), different contexts have different educational, technological and political histories that influence the uptake and use of digital technologies, as well as how digital literacy is conceptualised.

Despite these differences, there has been a drive to standardise the concept of “digital literacy” to ensure its definition could be measured and compared in an increasingly globalised educational setting. For example, multinational publishing and assessment company Pearson Education have introduced a “digital literacy” certification to help students become “more effective with technology”.¹ In addition, UNESCO is developing “A Global Framework to Measure Digital Literacy” (2018), which focuses on “relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship”. Definitions from multinational organisations such as these tend to standardise the concept of digital literacy in an “instrumental” way, promoting skills that are labour-oriented.

As three literacy researchers working in Australia, Argentina and Sweden, we are concerned by the overriding need to provide a standard definition of digital literacy. The goal of this research is to investigate how approaches to digital literacy differ across these three language contexts in order to find points of similarity and difference. In doing so, we provide counterpoint to the creeping universalisation of digital literacy as a standardised operational ideal. Across all contexts we have observed a deprioritising of the situated meanings and approaches that have been a hallmark of social literacies. Our goal is two-fold. First by exploring differences across contexts, we highlight why a standardised approach to digital literacies education is problematic. Second, we explore the value of cross-national, multidisciplinary scholarship on social approaches to digital literacies in order to find the thread of connection across communities.

In this article we draw on research in these three research contexts to tease out the different definitions of digital literacy. From its early conceptualisation, digital literacy has been defined in reference to different theoretical frames, which has meant that the concept has been ambiguous from the outset (see Chase and Laufenberg, 2011 ; Tamborg et al., 2018).After detailing the method, we analyse how digital literacy is conceptualised in the English speaking; Spanish speaking and Scandinavian contexts and the implications this has for digital literacy education in each country. We examine the dominant definitions, key tensions and challenges and make a case against the creeping universalisation of this concept. The article concludes with recommendations on how we might pursue a research agenda that advocates for local understandings of “digital literacies”.

Why digital literacy?

Digital literacy is closely related to new literacies, media literacy and even multiliteracies, so why have we chosen to focus on this particular concept? First, digital literacy appears to focus most intently on digital technologies. In the Spanish language, for example, media literacy is strictly linked to news media, whereas digital literacy has a broader meaning that can involve critical literacies or performative and instrumental literacies. ‘New literacies’ has faded from use given that the digital technologies in question were introduced over 20 years, meaning ‘new’ can be a misleading determiner. Multiliteracies, on the other hand, tends to focus on the growing linguistic diversity due to both multiculturalism and the proliferation of new media (Kalantzis and Cope, 1997). Apart from the Spanish-speaking context there is perhaps greatest similarity between digital and media literacy, however, there are a couple of key points of difference.

Although both concepts are based on developing critical thinking, digital media are now networked and interactive, which requires a unique set of skills and dispositions. Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy sum up the differences: “media literacy generally focuses on teaching youth to be critically engaged consumers of media, while digital literacy is more about enabling youth to participate in digital media in wise, safe and ethical ways” (Media Smarts, 2010). Digital literacy therefore encompasses issues of privacy, safety and ethical use of technology.

However, it is important to realise that digital literacy does not replace media literacy, but instead builds on it to articulate the set of skills required for a dynamic digital context. For example, the principles of critical media literacy (see Kellner and Share, 2005) are still relevant to engaging with digital texts, however, networked interactivity calls for more technical understandings such as algorithmic processing and the role of metrics (see Pangrazio, 2016; 2019 ). As our focus in this article is on digital technologies, digital literacy is the most appropriate concept for our review. Not only is the concept more widespread, but it also focuses on the key skills and dispositions required to live and learn with digital media. Digital literacy is also the concept that international organisations such as UNESCO and Pearson are trying to standardise across the three contexts in which we work.

Digital literacy – A contested term

The term “digital literacy” emerged in the United States and can be traced back to the publication of Paul Gilster’s book Digital Literacy in 1997. Gilster’s landmark work first defined the skills needed to critically navigate information in an increasingly digital world. However, as digital literacy emerged from an existent field (i.e. literacy) many of the tensions and issues evident in literacy research were carried over into this new and emerging field. For example, whether digital literacy should be thought of as a list of skills or whether it referred to something broader, such as social practices and values, remains an ongoing question. The extent to which context should be emphasised is another point of difference.

Both of these issues have implications for digital literacy education and research. For example, educators and researches working in the ‘skills’ tradition would focus on what needs to be taught and understood, whereas those working in the social tradition might be more interested in finding out what people actually do with digital media and texts in their everyday lives. To researchers from the social practice perspective, digital literacies cannot be separated from the social, technological and economic changes taking place, so any kind of empirical work must take account of these broader shifts (Sefton-Green et al., 2016).

Academic disciplines bind scholars to shared ways of knowing about what counts as ‘literacy’. In this article, we review work from scholars across a range of disciplines, including education, information science and psychology (see Appendix A for a more detailed summary of the disciplinary backgrounds of each author) - each with a different set of priorities. For example, to computer scientists, digital skills and competency tend to be more important than the identity work that takes place when participating. In this article, we draw out these differences, exploring the plurality of literacies, as well as the plurality of methods for identifying, measuring and developing them.

Methodology

Our aim in this article is to explore the diverse ways that digital literacy has been conceptualized by scholars in three different contexts. While this is not strictly a systematic review, we have used systematic methods to select the articles for review (see Gough et al., 2012; Grant and Booth, 2009). Following Gough et al. (2012, p.5) this involved three key activities:

identifying and describing the relevant research (‘mapping’ the research)

critically appraising research reports in a systematic manner (‘critiquing’ the research)

bringing together the findings into a coherent statement (‘synthesising’ the research).

As our goal was to analyse the most well-known and used definitions of “digital literacy”, we used Google Scholar to provide us with a list of the 10 most cited publications in the English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and Scandanavian contexts (i.e. 30 publications in total).

We chose Google Scholar because it is a leading search engine for scholarly literature across the contexts we research. Searches were made in Google Scholar using the terms “digital literacy/ies” and “digital competence” (a term used synonymously in Spanish and Scandinavian contexts with digital literacy). The number of citations listed by Google Scholar was used to determine the most cited articles in each international context. The searches were made from October 2018 through to June 2019. A list of reviewed publications can be found in Appendix A.

Since it is not possible on Google Scholar to choose to search for only peer-reviewed works, these initial lists were screened to only include peer-reviewed publications. In addition, publications in which “digital literacy” was a minor focus were also discarded. We are aware of the fact that using other databases may have given a slightly different result, however, our aim is not to give a complete picture of what has been written about digital literacy, but rather to enable the comparison of how the term is conceptualized in different contexts.²

Five questions guided our analysis of the corpus of 30 publications:

What local variations are there for ‘digital literacy’?

Who is writing about it?

What are the central tenets of these descriptions?

What fields, perspectives, disciplines are they working in?

What theoretical traditions are being used and/or drawn upon?

Each publication was closely read and re-read in terms of these five questions by a native-speaking member of the research team. Individual analyses of each publication were synthesised and written-up in English to form the basis of the review presented in the remainder of this paper.

Findings

The findings within each context are presented in three subsections: Digital literacy as concept; Digital literacy as educational initiative; and Issues and tensions. Each subsection is organised and discussed under the most relevant subheading. For example, articles that focus most intently on digital literacy in the classroom are discussed under the subheading “Digital literacy as educational initiative” rather than “Digital literacy as concept”.

The English-speaking context

The first, and still most significant, publication on digital literacy across all contexts was Paul Gilster (1997) book Digital Literacy (1568 citations). Gilster’s book was published at a time when the internet was just starting to reach the mainstream and there was much concern over defining the skills users needed to effectively navigate the ‘web’. An important part of Gilster’s contribution was bringing awareness to the different literacies required for individuals to engage with the internet. He emphasised the multimodal forms of communication (i.e. print, visual, video, audio etc) and argued that engaging with information on the internet required fundamentally different search and retrieval skills.

Digital literacy as concept

While Gilster begins with a fairly simple definition of digital literacy as ‘the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources’ (p.1), he goes beyond this to argue that it also emphasises particular cognitive challenges associated with integrating analogue and digital media. Of particular importance is the need to ‘contextualise the internet’ and the way it presents information against other non-networked forms.

Bawden’s 2001 article (1046 citations) is a review of digital literacy concepts with much of the article dedicated to finding intersections and similarities with other fields of literacy, such as information literacy and computer literacy. Coming from an information science background, there is a focus on information management and ‘skill-based literacies’ (p.219). Following Gilster (1997), Bawden argues that digital literacy should not be reduced to a set of functional skills and competences, and focuses on the importance of context to the meaning making process. By the conclusion of the article he advocates for a sociocultural perspective arguing for the significance of context and meaning making in information science.

Adopting a situated literacies approach, Jones and Hafner (2012) (259 citations) link the skills needed to use and critique digital technologies to particular contexts of use and application. Like Gilster (1997) Jones and Hafner frame digital literacy as much broader than simply functional use of digital devices, but as ‘the ability to creatively engage in particular social practices, to assume appropriate social identities, and to form and maintain various social relationships’ (p.12, emphasis in original). Despite this, the focus remains on digital literacy for education and work, which is examined against the framework of the ‘new work order’ ( Gee et al., 1996 ).

Adopting a similar approach, O’Brien and Scharber (2008) (187 citations) conceive of digital and traditional literacies as more like different points on the continuum. They conceive of digital literacy in the plural (i.e. digital literacies) and define it as ‘socially situated practices’ which are ‘supported by skills, strategies and stances that enable the representation and understanding of ideas using a range of modalities enabled by digital tools’ (p. 67). O’Brien and Scharber argue that digital literacies should be seen as ‘evolving’, as digital practices ‘shape, and are shaped by, youth inside and outside of school’ (p. 66). Rather than seeing traditional print based and digital literacies as opposite ends of the spectrum they argue that education should work to ‘braid together new digital literacies and old or already established literacies’ (p. 67).

The main point in Lankshear and Knobel’s (2008) (202 citations) introductory chapter on digital literacy is to argue the importance of seeing digital literacy in the plural (i.e. digital literacies). They provide three reasons for this: the sheer diversity of digital practices that exist; the strength and usefulness of adopting a sociocultural perspective on literacy practices; and the benefit of an expansive view when considering digital learning. They argue digital literacies should be seen as a sociocultural practice and that there are different ways of reading and writing with digital texts.

Digital literacy as educational initiative

While several scholars (Gilster, 1997; Jones and Hafner 2012; O'Brien and Scharber, 2008) look at digital literacy as concept and practice, four articles in the top 10 most cited focus on frameworks or recommendations for education. Alkalai ( 2004 ) (655 citations), Martin (2005) (178 citations) and Aviram and Eshet-Alkalai (2006) all take a functional approach in their articles and attempt to develop a framework for digital literacy that would be useful for educators. On the other hand, Bawden (2008) addresses emerging tensions at the conceptual level, but similarly concludes with a framework for educators.

Alkalai (2004) argues that the use of the term ‘digital literacy’ has been ‘inconsistent’, arguing that some scholars ‘restrict the concept to the technical aspects of operating in digital environments, while others apply it in the context of cognitive and socio-emotional aspects of work in a computer environment’ (p.103). Instead he identifies five subcategories to digital literacy: photo-visual literacy; reproduction literacy; branching literacy; information literacy; and socioemotional literacy. Alkalai repeatedly refers to digital literacy as a ‘survival skill’ for ‘scholars and information consumers’ (pp. 100–101). By contrast, Lankshear and Knobel (2008) (202 citations) argue against a standardised instrumental approach to developing digital literacies, arguing that situated digital learning, such as through online gaming and fanfiction ‘underpin deep understanding and competence’ (p. 13). Furthermore, acknowledging the different ways of being digitally literate can address longstanding structural inequities.

At the conclusion of his article, Bawden (2008) (438 citations), puts forward four components for digital literacy education based on his reading of Gilster (1997). They are: Underpinnings (i.e. traditional literacy and computer/ICT literacy); Background knowledge (i.e. nature of information resources); Central competences (i.e. ‘knowledge assembly’); Attitudes and perspectives (i.e. independent learning, moral/social literacy).

In a slightly later article, Alkalai and Aviram (2006) (176 citations) adopt a similar premise to (Martin, 2005) and Alkalai (2004), arguing that the discourse on digital literacy ‘lacks a sound integrative framework and theoretical foundation’ and calls for a ‘clear and theoretically-grounded view of the basic literacies required for effective learning in digital environments’ (p. 1). Adopting Alkalai’s (2004) earlier idea, they argue that digital literacy is a ‘survival skill’. However, in this article their main goal is to test whether digital literacy should be thought of as a coherent list of already existent skills or whether it goes beyond this to mean ‘something much deeper’ (p. 3) involving completely different epistemologies and values to more traditional print-based literacies. Alkalai and Aviram’s question stems from a binary perspective in which digital texts are seen as antithetical to traditional print based texts. As such, they argue that unlike traditional print-based culture, digital culture is ‘post modern, multimedia-based, branching and much less individual-oriented’ (p. 16). This, they argue, lays the foundation for a decidedly new type of literacy – digital literacy.

Issues and tensions

The first issue emerging in English speaking contexts is that the term digital literacy has become too broad and confused. Bawden (2008), for example, argues that digital literacy needs to be more clearly distinguished from ‘information literacy’ and ‘computer literacy’, as well as more recent terms ‘informacy’ and ‘information fluency’. Like Gilster (1997) and Alkalai (2004), Bawden argues that a ‘central theme’ of digital literacy should be ‘an ability to synthesize and integrate information from varied sources’ (p. 28). At the same time, he explains that there is a need for flexibility in how we think about digital literacy education, explaining that it is not ‘sensible to suggest that one specific model of digital literacy will be appropriate for all people or, indeed, for one person over all their lifetime’ (p. 28).

By contrast, Buckingham’s (2011) book chapter ‘Defining digital literacy’ (377 citations) adopts a strident tone to argue against the narrow, functional definitions of digital literacy that tend to focus on ‘information’ and ‘online safety’. The word literacy, he argues is from a ‘broader form of education about media’ (p. 75) and should therefore recognise the symbolic, persuasive and emotional dimensions of our uses and interpretations. Similarly, Lankshear and Knobel (2008) argue against a ‘narrow focus on encoding and decoding’ (p. 8) but their reasoning is more to do with building bridges between formal and informal learning than the dimensions of the media itself. Nevertheless, like Bawden (2008), Buckingham questions whether the proliferation of different “literacies” in recent years means that literacy has become a synonym for competence.

The Spanish-speaking context

The first thing to acknowledge in the Spanish-speaking context is the difficulty of translating ‘digital literacy’. As Chartier and Rockwell (2013) have indicated, the difference between the meanings of literacy and alfabetización (the term which stands for literacy in Spanish) was first noticed in the 1980s, when education reforms and standardized evaluations carried out by different English-speaking countries were translated to other languages, along with their terminology. While alfabetización originally refers to the procedure of encoding and decoding written language and focuses on ‘mechanical skills’, more recent and broader conceptualizations of this term relate to the use of written language in context, which is closer to the English term ‘literacy’.

Digital literacy as concept

Despite the complex and controversial nature of the terms alfabetización and competencia, many of the studies are not critical examinations and instead define them as a goal within frameworks that contribute to the field of education. This is a noted difference from the reviewed articles in the English-speaking context, which appear more intent on defining the term conceptually.

The most cited studies in the Spanish speaking context provide definitions of digital literacy that act as a reaction to the instrumental notions of technology recognized in the field of education. In an attempt to transcend what are considered restrictive characterizations, some scholars discussed below (Area Moreira, 2008; 2010; Area Moreira et al., 2012; de Pablos Pons, 2010; Gutiérrez Martín, 2003; Gutiérrez-Martín and Tyner, 2012) take up theoretical contributions on digital and information literacies. Based on these, they argue that digital literacies should encourage students not only to use digital technology in a functional, instrumental manner, but also – and more importantly – to transform information into knowledge.

Gutiérrez Martín (2003) (535 citations) emphasizes this idea when advocating for what he calls a ‘multiple literacy’, composed of three basic referents: an information and digital literacy; an ethical literacy; and a relational, socially focused, literacy. Other well cited works (Area Moreira, 2008, 2010; Area Moreira et al., 2012; de Pablos Pons, 2010) also contend that digital literacy ought to be developed in educational contexts through informational and digital competences, oriented by non-instrumental or merely functional objectives.

The distinction between instrumental and critical-reflexive uses of digital technologies is also a visible concern in (Ferrés and Piscitelli, 2012) (288 citations), Gros Salvat and Contreras, 2006 (172 citations) and Cabero Almenara and Llorente Cejudo’s ( Almenara and Llorente Cejudo, 2008 ) (128 citations) work. In words of the latter, ‘learning ICT should not refer only to the technical-instrumental conception, but also to other dimensions, such as the symbolic, social and communicative’ (p. 16).

However, the social, critical and ideological dimensions of digital literacy are nuanced differently when oriented towards the civic and economic demands of the ‘information society’. Similar to Cabero Almenara and Llorente Cejudo (2008), Área Moreira (2010) (215 citations) identifies two perspectives to digital literacy that should be reconciled. He argues that education and training programs not only need to meet the demands of the market economy, but should also aim to democratically integrate all citizens in the information society. Other Spanish speaking scholars argue similarly. For example, Ferrés and Piscitelli (2012) deviate from the traditional meaning of the term competence, in order to promote participatory digital culture (Jenkins, 2008).

Also from a critical perspective, Gutiérrez Martín and Tyner (2012) (280 citations) take up Buckingham’s work (2011) to propose a media education in which digital competence is neither reduced to its technological and instrumental dimension nor the perils of use. Instead, these authors point out the need to pick up the key aspects of critical approaches from old media education (Masterman, 1985) as a means to rethink new media.

All the most cited works from the Spanish speaking context are concerned with the increasingly complex nature of communication and cultural practices. Some of them point out the need to transcend traditional literacy and to address the new emerging traits of digital culture in the educational field in terms of multiliteracy (Area Moreira et al., 2008) (235 citations).

Digital literacy as educational initiative

The most cited publications on digital literacy and digital competences in the Spanish-speaking context focus on school (Area Moreira, 2008; Gros and Contreras, 2006), university (Area Moreira, 2010; de Pablos Pons, 2010), formal education (Gutiérrez Martín and Tyner, 2012) but also address education in general terms (Cabero Almenara and Llorente Cejudo, 2008; Ferrés and Piscitelli, 2012; Gutiérrez Martín, 2003). They point out the challenges of the digital context, in order to outline the competencies and changes that institutions, teachers and students require to face it.

Many of the reviewed works from this context articulate digital technologies with already existing pedagogical frameworks. In this line, some of the publications examined are focused on overcoming what their authors understand in general terms as a traditional pedagogical model of education in which the teacher is an isolated professional, the initiator and centre of the instruction process and the agent who transmits information to a passive student, in the context of a resistant institution. Close to this idea, Cabero Almenara and Llorente Cejudo (2008) advocate for transforming the present teaching culture into a learning culture, in which the reproduction of information is replaced by the process of actively building knowledge with new communication tools that demand an active engagement of learners.

Although Ferrés and Piscitelli (2012) do not refer critically to any pedagogical format, they share the same view on the need for a critical, active and participatory way of learning in order to develop media competence, which tacitly acts as a counterpart to the pedagogical model mentioned before. These authors draw our attention to a neuroscientific perspective which clashes with the ideas of critical pedagogy, where teaching is an opportunity to establish a cultural, ideological, political and social framework for student´s learning. Highlighting school´s resistance to change and current teacher-centred pedagogies, Area Moreira (2008, 2010; Area Moreira et al., 2012) proposes a general techno-pedagogical frame that brings together psychological principles of Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory (1978), Piaget’s constructivism (1981) and Paulo Freirés emancipation literacy theory (1977). Also from a socio-cultural perspective, Gros and Contreras take up Wenger´s (1998) pedagogic theory, where learning implies taking part in cultural practices and in the activities shared by social communities. They also base their proposal on the educational approach of John Dewey (1995), who stresses the importance of experience, reflective and thinking skills, as well as democratic and humanitarian ideals.

De Pablos Pons (2010) (127 citations) is also guided by a socio-cultural vision of learning, where education is a process of sharing knowledge between teachers and students. He explains that while digital technologies do not provide a pedagogical frame, they do contribute to settle the grounds for new educational formats.

Issues and tensions

Two of the most significant issues arising in the Spanish-speaking context are not addressed by its most cited works. These have to do, first, with the tension between the terms literacy and alfabetización, and literacy and competence. Many scholars point out the problematic nature of the translation of the term literacy to Spanish (Braslavsky, 2004; Kress, 2005). Dussel and Southwell (2009) argue that, despite this, there is much to be gained by the adoption of the term alfabetizaciones (alfabetización in plural), as it highlights the range of digital practices and languages people are currently engaged in and are relevant to education and school.

The term competence has also raised controversy, as it has become an organizing element of the curriculum in many educational systems in Spanish-speaking countries in the past decades. It responds to educational reforms developed by international organizations and is framed by neoliberal demands such as structural adjustments of educational expenditures, a retrenchment of state allocation of resources and decentralization and greater autonomy of educational institutions (Fonseca, 1998).

The Scandinavian context

Similar to the Spanish context, “literacy” generally is not translated in Scandinavian languages (Erstad, 2010a) (131 citations) and digital literacy and digital competence are used interchangeably in the Scandinavian context, although distinctions are also made between the two. Digital literacy and digital competence are in the reviewed articles written in relation to 21st century skills, information literacy, media literacy, computer literacy, and ICT literacy.

Digital literacy as concept

Many Scandinavian scholars draw on sociocultural theories (Barton, 2007; Vygotsky, 1978) in their definition of literacy to emphasise how it is shaped by the historical, cultural and political context (Voogt et al., 2013 , Erstad et al., 2007). Yet other theories are clearly integral to how digital literacy is conceptualised. Erstad et al. (2007) (103 citations) refer to social semiotics and multimodality (Kress and van Leuween, 2001) in their analysis of students’ media productions. Whereas the notions of situated practice and communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) are referred to as analytical tools in some of the articles. The most cited paper, Tuominen et al., (2005) (331 citations), comes from the field of information science rather than education. The authors argue for information literacy to be seen as a sociotechnical practice that includes technology but emphasize that the use of technology depends on the situation and people involved.

While definitions of digital competence refer to aspects of digital technology and its increased impact on society and education, Aarsand (2007) (159 citations) and Voogt et al. (2013) (266 citations) point out that the conceptual background of literacy stems from critiques of traditional conceptions of the ability to read and write. Literacy incorporates a broader sociocultural understanding of different forms of representations and changes in reading and writing practices. Erstad (2010b) (109 citations) points out the impact that technologies have on life in general and on our conception of learning. New technologies change conceptions of literacy and literacy practices change because of technological developments.

Hatlevik and Christophersen (2013) (113 citations) write that digital literacy and digital competence are often used as synonyms since they do, to some extent, overlap. When referring to the differences, however, they compare each with digital skills, which focus on technological issues, and regard both digital literacy and competence as broader terms that incorporate skills, understandings and critical reflections. According to (Krumsvik, 2008) (143 citations), digital competence is the most commonly used concept in Scandinavia. Based on an overview of how digital competence is defined in European and global policy documents, Søby (2013), concludes that the concept has a double function as agenda setter since it is a principal concept in innovation policy and educational reform, while simultaneously acting as an objective in the development of schools and pedagogy. Krumsvik (2008) argues that competence as a concept is more holistically interpreted in Scandinavian English emphasising not only the use of digital texts and technology, but also how to be a digital citizen.

Digital literacy as educational initiative

Since a large majority of the articles reviewed in the Scandinavian context discuss digital literacy and digital competence in an educational setting, the expected “outcomes” are students who are able to live and work in a digital society. In the Norwegian curriculum, which is taken as an example in several articles (Aarsand, 2007; Erstad et al., 2007; Hatlevik and Christophersen, 2013 ; Krumsvik, 2008; Voogt et al., 2013), digital competence, rather than digital literacy, has been used since 2006 but has lately been changed to digital skills or proficiency (in Norwegian ‘ferdighet’). The ability to use digital tools is in the Norwegian policy documents referred to as a fourth basic skill, together with reading, writing and numeracy. Erstad (2010b) states that the term used in the curricula, ‘the ability to use digital tools’ implies ‘a narrow conception of digital literacy as directly linked to operating a specific technology’ (p. 300). The meaning of digital competence is not static but changes over time as both social practices and technology develop. Since the introduction of the concept in the Norwegian curriculum, a broader understanding of digital competence has developed, which includes tools, critique and learning competences (Engen et al., 2015).

The Scandinavian or Nordic concept of bildung influences how digital literacy and digital competence is interpreted in educational contexts. Bildung emphasizes what it means to be literate in contemporary culture and refers to critical, conscious understanding and reflection of technology-use (Erstad et al., 2007 ; Voogt et al., 2013). In a school context, digital bildung focuses on how the digitisation of society affects pupils’ participation in different communities and their identity development. Ethical and moral issues around the role of technology are of importance as well as the need for students and teachers to develop their critical abilities when evaluating sources and being aware of ethical implications in a digitised society (Krumsvik, 2011) (98 citations). Erstad (2010a) writes about digital bildung as cultural competence that concerns the challenges of learning and being part of a digital culture. This involves being able to take informed decisions important to oneself but also to society. Digital bildung refers to a holistic view on learning and literacy that incorporates how students learn and communicate in different contexts and with different tools.

In a digital competence model for teachers developed by Krumsvik (2011; 2014) (109 citations), digital bildung is regarded as the fourth core component along with basic ICT skills, didactic ICT competence and learning strategies. Krumsvik considers digital bildung to be a meta-perspective that needs to be acquired by teachers in order to understand how bildung influences the three other components.

Issues and tensions

The first issue that emerges in the Scandinavian context is that the abundance of concepts associated with literacy make the term vague. For this reason, literacy can be used as a synonym for knowledge, competence and learning (Säljö, 2012). Changes in what constitutes digital literacy involves a move from tool based functional literacies to literacies of representation, as well as from reproduction and reception to creating and sharing in digital environments.

A second issue relates to whether digital literacy is a ‘skill’ for using digital technologies or a ‘disposition’ toward those technologies. Erstad (2010b) argues against the conceptualisation of digital literacy as a ‘skill’. In his opinion, literacy is not related to a specific technology but ‘rather the competences and skills needed in order to take advantage of different technologies in order to learn, framed within certain social and institutional settings like schools’ (p. 295). Based on findings of a large-scale intervention study in Norway, Erstad argues for the need to look into both institutional practices and the social practices of teachers to identify the contextual constraints for establishing new literacy practices with digital media.

Finally, as in the English speaking context, the tension between the term ‘digital literacy’ and ‘media literacy’ arises, with questions over which best encapsulates the skills and dispositions young people require to be active and agentic citizens in the digital age. Erstad (2010a; Erstad et al., 2007), for example, argues for the use of media literacy since it relates to broader aspects, such as production, representation and audience, and living in a media society, rather than focusing on skills of handling and operating information and applications.

Discussion

This article has examined how the term digital literacies is defined and applied in teaching and research across the English speaking, Spanish speaking and Scandinavian context. While using citation counts of articles does have limitations, it provides a broad indication of the articles that have gained prominence in each of these contexts. We use this as a way of exploring issues that have concerned us as literacy researchers, such as the way literacy research articulates (or not) with young people’s digital lives, as well as the changing focus of curriculum, pedagogy and educational policy. As sociocultural researchers we are particularly attuned to the influence of context on digital literacies. Yet despite local differences, we find some universality to the tensions that emerge in all three contexts – tensions associated with the conceptual, practical and political dimensions of digital literacies research.

The first, and perhaps most obvious thing to note, is that the term digital literacy is most commonly used in English speaking parts of the world. Originating in the US (Gilster, 1997) and spreading quickly to the UK, Canada and Australia, the term digital literacy appeared to capture the set of skills and dispositions required for effective use of digital media. It refers not only to the skills and capacities required to use digital texts, but also a disposition toward the digital that is both critical and creative. In these early conceptualisations, digital literacy had a normative function, with little focus on the everyday literacies individuals bring to their use of digital media.

While digital literacy is now used in the Spanish speaking and Scandinavian research contexts, it is not easily translated, and terms such as digital competence, digital bildung and alfabetización digital have greater prominence. Perhaps the closest to Gilster’s (1997) original definition of digital literacy is the Spanish alfabetización digital and the Scandinavian digital bildung. Both terms, like digital literacy, are broader in definition and emphasize that ‘literate’ technology use involves digital skills, as well as critical, conscious and reflective capabilities (Gutierrez Martin, 2003; Voogt et al., 2013). However, alfabetización, bildung and competence capture something specific to the contexts in which they are used, and it is this specificity that will be lost as the term ‘digital literacy’ becomes the standard. Indeed, as some have argued the globalisation of the term ‘digital literacy’ could be seen as a kind of ‘cultural colonialism’ (Kress, 2005).

Across all three contexts digital literacy refers to something broader than digital competence, digital skills or digital proficiency (Area Moreira, 2008; Bawden, 2002). Digital competence, for example, refers to the specific set of skills required to be digitally literate, whereas digital literacy refers to skills as well as dispositions, including the tacit and social practices associated with digital media use. In more recent years, with the push to standardise digital literacy as a set of ‘skills’ the trend has been against social approaches to literacy. However, several scholars (Buckingham, 2011; Säljö, 2012) have critiqued broader definitions of digital literacy as ‘vague’, arguing that digital literacy becomes a ‘catch-all’ phrase for knowledge, competence and learning. This might explain why the term ‘digital competence’ rather than ‘digital literacy’ has become an agenda setter for education policy in Scandinavia (Søby, 2013).

Focusing more specifically on ‘digital literacy’, the different definitions analysed in this article reveal the tensions evident in the field. These definitional debates have been more prominent in English speaking research, whereas in the Scandinavian and Spanish speaking context the literature has been more focused on applied understandings of the term. Yet despite the prominence of the term in the English-speaking context, and after reviewing the articles listed, it is still difficult to define what is meant by ‘digital literacy’. This has been an ongoing challenge for digital literacies research (see Chase and Laufenberg, 2011; Sefton-Green, Nixon and Erstad, 2009), and shows no signs of being resolved any time soon. Some believe this lack of definition is positive (i.e. Lankshear and Knobel, 2008; O’Brien and Scharber, 2008), as not one form of digital literacy will be appropriate for all learners or even the same learner across their life course. However, the definitional ‘squishiness’ (Chase and Laufenberg, 2011) of digital literacy has implications for education, which is only exacerbated by the fact that students and teachers relate to technology in different ways inside and outside the school. Sefton-Green, Nixon and Erstad (2009) argue digital literacy needs to be framed ‘far more at the intersection of formal and informal learning domains where “top down” and “bottom up” approaches meet’ (p.110).

Some of these tensions existed well before literacies became ‘digital’. Perhaps the most significant of these is whether literacies are a cognitive process or a social practice, which has implications for how digital literacy is taught in schools. If literacy is seen as a social practice then the pedagogical approach might involve educators connecting school based digital literacy tasks with student’s everyday practices and their existent ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et al., 1992). On the other hand, if it is approached as a cognitive process then pedagogy might focus on building new skills that can be applied to digital technologies in a functional way. These are unresolved tensions which are glossed over in the drive to standardise the term. As a consequence, at the international level ‘digital literacy’ is approached in a more generic and instrumental way and avoids drawing on the specific operational context of the learner.

Indeed, in contrast to the plurality and expansion of digital cultures, and by extension, the skills required to be digitally literate, according to the works reviewed there has been little expansion to digital literacies education in all three contexts. In the main, social approaches to digital literacy remain on the sideline, meaning young people’s digital lives remain quite separate from school-based programs (Livingstone and Sefton-Green, 2016). This is not to say that there are no innovative digital literacies programs taking place in classrooms around the world – as we know for a fact there are – but just that these are not often in the most cited academic literature. Adopting a sociocultural approach to digital literacies means researchers and educators should not only appropriate and extend upon everyday uses of digital media, but also investigate how these cultural practices can be engaged with in the formal school curriculum. In doing so it is also necessary to understand how formal curriculum is also cultural and how it is appropriated by teachers. In the rush to standardise digital literacy, we are concerned that social and local approaches to digital literacies will continue to be overlooked even though it is evident across all three contexts that this is the most productive method of engaging students.

Related to this point, is the question raised in each of the three contexts examined regarding the overarching purpose of digital literacy education. Is the goal of digital literacy education to create productive workers in the ‘knowledge economy’ or is it to help individual’s realise personal and social liberation? Indeed, across all three contexts, scholars recognise the need to see literacies in the plural (ie. ‘literacies’), as diverse texts and codes require diverse literacies. Yet it is this fine-grained, learner focused approach that will be further lost if multinational educational-technology companies are left to determine what it means to be digitally literate. While best pedagogical practice might suggest scaffolding students’ understanding of the technological, as well as the social and personal implications associated with digital practices, this approach does present a challenge to international, standardised testing.

In recent decades, critical pedagogical theories, particularly in literacy, have played a central role in overcoming restricted perspectives on the social and political purposes of education. We have learnt from Paulo Freire (1977) that literacy can be conceptualized as a series of situated social and political decisions that allow subjects to interact with the existing culture as well as to recreate it in a critical and emancipatory way. Other contributions to critical pedagogy from Dewey (1995) have made it possible to develop a humanitarian approach to democratic education and rethink the values that guide learning in relation to the social practices of digital culture. These ideas have been crucial to critically transcend literacy in terms of the acquisition of neutral, ahistorical, cognitive abilities which satisfy the educational requirements of an increasingly predatory and concentrated global market.

We also understand that the process of standardisation of digital literacy indicated in the beginning of this work is part of a broader tendency that seeks to blur the disputes that underly the notion of digital literacy in favour of a functional, technical perspective of this notion. Given this, our comparative work has been an attempt to bring those disputes to the surface and systematize them as part of the present educational scenario.

Final remarks

To conclude, we make two suggestions for future digital literacies research. First, future research should investigate the tensions that arise when critical pedagogical approaches are reconfigured into digital literacy frameworks and operationalised in schools. In particular, a question that arose in all three contexts was whether the goal of digital literacies is to create productive workers in the 'knowledge economy’ or, in a more sophisticated fashion, address active engagement with democratic citizenship. This issue goes to the very heart of digital literacy education and research and in many respects is resolved by the individual teacher and/or researcher as they decide which theories best align with their values and their student’s needs. A variety of approaches and models to digital literacy is therefore an advantage, and tacitly acknowledges the right of the educator to choose. Investigating how educators make these decisions, as well as the discourses that influence the decision-making process would help understand how these theories and frameworks are operationalised in classrooms.

A final suggestion for future research might be to investigate how digital literacies pedagogies are addressed in educational institutions. Many lines of research assume that educational institutions –and education itself– must be transformed; either to adjust their culture and traditions to fulfil democratic citizenship or meet the imperatives of the global market. Yet this approach often overlooks the social and cultural dimensions already present in current curriculum and pedagogy, and in the broader institutions of schooling. All of these points are key to transformation processes in the educational field. Detailed ethnographic accounts of how digital cultures and practices manifest in schools would guide researchers as they reconceptualise digital literacies models to meet the needs of educators and students.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-ldm-10.1177_2042753020946291 - Supplemental material for What is digital literacy? A comparative review of publications across three language contexts

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ldm-10.1177_2042753020946291 for What is digital literacy? A comparative review of publications across three language contexts by Luci Pangrazio, Anna-Lena Godhe and Alejo González López Ledesma in E-Learning and Digital Media

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Luci Pangrazio

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Luci Pangrazio is an Alfred Deakin postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University (Australia) focusing on critical literacies and the changing nature of digital texts. Her research studies personal data and privacy, the politics of digital platforms, the gig economy and young people’s critical understandings of digital media.

Anna-Lena Godhe holds a PhD in Applied Information Technology and is currently working as an associate professor in Educational Science at Malmö University. Her research interests revolves around the use of digital technologies within language education.

Alejo González López Ledesma holds an MA in Educational Technology and is a PhD candidate in the Education program at Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). He currently is a doctoral fellow at CONICET, the Argentinean national research council, and Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. He develops his research in the areas of digital literacy and Language and Literature teacher training. At present he holds a teaching position at Universidad Pedagógica Nacional.

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