New Media and New Literacy: Advancements or downfall of Society?

“what counts as literacy, how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape,” and what value we should ascribe to the new forms of communication that continue to emerge and evolve online. (Jenkins, 2009).

You’ve probably never had someone ask you “have you read any good tweet lately?” and it’s likely that you will not be asked to analyze and compare Facebook status posts on a standardized test any time soon, but the truth is, much of the reading we do these days is not done with a book, and much of the knowledge we attain does not come from reading.

My husband, who is a poet, novelist, and works at a college library for his day job, finds this trend very depressing and indicative of the downfall of our society. I do not. While I love books, and would not compare reading War and Peace with reading an online zine or anime comic, I do think that each has value and each probably does develop literacy, albeit a different kind of literacy.

Internet surfing for information can be very efficient, in a scatter shot way, to develop a fairly well developed knowledge of something quickly, while a book is more linear and although might develop an idea in a richer and deeper way, is ultimately a one way conversation where online learning can be more collaborative.

For acquiring information, instructions and directions give me Youtube.com and Lynda.com any day over a manual. Someone, somewhere has posted a Youtube.com instructional video on just about anything you can image and I’d much rather see how to do something, than read about it.

My son has an ill-defined reading learning disability. It’s not dyslexia, but he struggles with texts in a similar way and exhibits dysgraphia when writing.  Learning to read, and fluency with reading has not come easily for him, but he loves learning. There are several series of educational books that present various topics in the form of online comics; history, science, etc. He loves these, and devours them. He also loves books and to have someone read to him and listens to audiobooks all the time.

I do hope that he will be able to read long difficult “good for you” books one day, and that books will still exist. Reading on a tablet and scouring a website are not the same as sitting with a good book, or strolling through the stacks of a library and I very much hope that in his future he will have those experiences, but I do think that he is developing literacy when he listens to books or reads digital comics as well, and in some ways, he might be learning even more valuable skills for the future than sitting with a book.  But don’t tell that to my husband, he’ll just get depressed.