Throughout the discussion of multimodal composition on the previous page, the idea of “information” comes up several times—instructors need to account for visuals in literacy instruction because students receive information visually on the web; the way we process information changes depending on whether a composition is organized spatially or temporally; digital tools change the modes through which we can deliver synchronous or asynchronous information; multimodal compositions can be confusing to readers when the information is presented so non-linearly that the form is unrecognizable.
Information has always been a foundational feature of communication and composition, but the increased access to and shear amount of information made available on the internet makes information a defining characteristic of digital literacy.
Collins & Halverson (2009) describe the relationship between information and digital literacy in terms of “lifelong learning.” Not unlike the shift from apprenticeship to universal education in the 1830s, we are in the middle of an education revolution that puts theories of digital literacy at odds with current practices in K12 schooling. In most elementary and secondary schools, the goal is to broadly teach students what they need to know to be successful in life; however, there is more information in the world today than it is possible to learn in thirteen years. Furthermore, this influx of information has changed the nature of work: “jobs have changed to become much more knowledge intensive” and the “work has changed from hands-on to inferential” because the “computerization of work puts a premium on skills of accessing, evaluating, and synthesizing information” (5).
Bohn & Short's (2009) census of the world’s data and information provide some compelling empirical evidence of the presence of information in our lives: they found that Americans consume approximately 34 gigabytes of information per person per day—and that’s not including information consumed at work.1 Consequently, “information literacy,” generally understood as the ability to navigate the vast “text-based communities and economies” available online (Kapitzle, 2001), including the related issues of privacy and security (Davidson, 2014b), has become a key component of digital literacy.
Some scholars (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007; Buckingham, 2008; Martin, 2008) caution against focusing the discussion of digital literacy on information because such an emphasis implies that technology rapidly changes our lives rather than the human influences that drive the development of that technology (i.e., they worry about technological determinism). As Buckingham puts it, emphasis on information leads scholars to overlook the “symbolic or persuasive aspects of digital media, [and] the emotional dimensions of our uses and interpretations of these media” (77).
Others (Bruce, 2003; Bohn & Short, 2009) counter that information necessarily involves communication and thus encompasses the persuasive and emotional elements of using digital media. Bohn & Short argue that the internet has lead to active information consumption (in 2008, a third of all words were received interactively), which suggests that the true cultural value of increased access to information is two-way communication (this argument is corroborated by Davis' (2011) case study of a college student’s use of digital tools). Bohn & Short support this argument by distinguishing between data and information: data, they explain, only becomes information when it is “available to potential consumers” (10); if the data is stored but not delivered to a person, then it is not information. Information, then, cannot be separated from the persuasive or emotional dimensions of media use because information requires human exchange. As Bohn & Short explain, “pure volume of information does not necessarily determine its value or impact. The right information, delivered at a key time and place, can move mountains” (15).
The consequence for digital literacy, then, is not that literate people are able to deal with the sheer amount of information available, but that they are able to critically examine what communication mechanisms and motivations make that information available and use that critical analysis to direct the way they respond to and interact with the information they encounter.
Fieldhouse & Nicholas (2008) describe this distinction as information savvy versus information wise. Information savvy involves “a common sense approach to and awareness of the problems and pitfalls of exploring the highways of the internet” (48), whereas “information wise” involves the more thoughtful “ability to exercise judgment, discernment, and prudence” (49). In other words, being information savvy can help us accomplish our goals online and avoid dangers (e.g., recognizing spam and viruses), but being information wise will help us become more critically aware of how all information “is inevitably ‘couched in ideology’” and “‘bias’ is unavoidable” (Buckingham, 2008, 77). When digitally literate people approach information, they recognize the ways in which the information is changed by the author’s bias and the technology’s constraints.
When we think about information as a characteristic of digital literacy, and hold digital literacy as learning outcome in a college composition course, our goal is to help students become information wise. Practical ways to incorporate information into writing courses include:
Sharing versus Management or Evaluation. Many definitions of information literacy emphasize the need to manage information, teaching students to deal with the mass amount of information in the world. Others focus on the need to evaluate information, teaching students to identify “credible” sources. I would add that we need to highlight the fact that information is an act of communication; it is about sharing and exchanging; it is a rhetorical act. Framing conversations about information around sharing offer a more productive way to discuss management and evaluation because the conversation begins with, “Who is delivering the information? What constraints are placed on the information by the tools facilitating that delivery?”
Publication Processes. Instructors can ask students to examine the publication process for the sources they cite in their papers, or map the publication process for several online sources (i.e., a blog, a news article, a peer-reviewed journal). In a writing in the disciplines course, instructors can ask students to analyze the publication process in their field of study.
Information Exchanges. Ask students to track the ways they share and consume information via email, social media, verbal conversations, etc., in the course of a normal week. What about those actions makes it an exchange? How do the tools change the way the information is delivered, received, and interpreted?
There is a clear relationship between information and multimodal composition, namely that the distribution of multimodal compositions is an act of information sharing, but these are only two of the characteristics of digital literacy. The third is collaboration.
1One byte is equivalent to one character of text, one kilobyte is a page of text, one megabyte is a small photo, and one gigabyte is an hour of high-definition video (Bohn & Short, 2009, 8). [back to text]
For more information about literacy instruction, see History of Literacy Instruction and Teaching Digital Literacy. For more information about the relationship between literacy and digital tools, see The Problem of Tool Use.
Created by Mary K. Stewart (2014)