totallyinnerperfection

[totallyinnerperfection]

The element I chose for bitsy game is “ digital communication”, which concerns about the electronic exchange of information. My idea is creating a story. First I set a character, the user can make it walk back home. Then I designed the home into different rooms, such as kitchen, bedroom and washing room. When the user moves the character to different place, the different conversation will be carried out. And his goal is to find the telephone, which is located at a corner. After the user found the telephone, it will go to another page that shows icons of two app, which are gmail and facebook. Then the user can choose the app to communicate with his friends.

My design is based on the daily life of many young people nowadays. The main challenge I overcame is how to design the image of each object in an abstract but clear way. I tried many times and finally got a satisfy result, the user can understand the image very easily. The most successful features of this work I think is the user will find the organization and story very close to daily life. What I want to improve is after the user chooses the app to communicate; there could be more information about the communication. And also, there could be more choice of communication methods to show nowadays’ large variety of digital communication ways. Others said the interactive part is good, very interesting and they feel be involved. And they also suggested that the theme of the game could be more obvious, because some of them didn’t find out it’s talk about digital communication. And after the character found the telephone, the last part could be more detailed, showing more how the digital communication works.

[totallyinnerperfection]

The element I chose for twine is “ Digital rights and responsibilities”, which concerns about the freedoms extended to everyone in the digital world. And in the beginning I quoted Ribble and Bailey’s word to show the importance of digital rights and responsibilities, which says digital rights and responsibilities are privileges and freedom extended to all digital technology users. Then I talked about the roles that effected by this situation and give some suggestions to the people using online resources. At the end, I put two images, and emphasize the responsibilities for digital citizens.

My main idea is show explains the digital rights and responsibilities clearly by giving some references and examples. My creative decision is to enable the person click on the keywords to move to the next page, which make the process more interactive and interesting.

For the improvement, I think it will be better if I inserted more pictures and diagrams in each page, to make the work more attractive and colorful. Each page could have more interactive designs. And adding gif would also be a good idea to make the information vivid and interesting. What's more, I would like to design the fonts of the text, make it not so dull. Other people said the logic of my work is very clear and simple, they think the information is easy to understand. However, they also said the context is not so attractive and interesting and I could design more elements to convey the information in a better way.

[totallyinnerperfection]

The element I chose for infrographic is “Digital Literacy”, which concerns about teaching and learning about technology and its use. And all the questions I designed is connected with the digital literacy evaluation standard, which consists of eight aspects: e-safe, practical and functional skills, critical thinking and evaluation, cultural and social understanding, collaboration, ability to find and select information, effective communication and creativity.

Based on this eight aspects related to digital literacy, I designed 13 questions to value how much a person require the digital literacy. Such as “ I always search the same information more than twice to check the reliable sources” reflecting the person’s ability of find and select information online. And for each question, if the person’s answer is yes, he could get 2 points. The person will go through the questions and get his own grades, and then he can understand how much he has acquired digital literacy. The major creative decision I made is to visualize all the questions and make them easier to understand by inserting pictures and suggestions. So while the person doing this test, he will also understand what is important in digital literacy gradually.

One main challenge I overcame is how to organize the way of design questions, I thought of by asking “ Do you ……”, then I found it’s better to use descriptions instead of questions. People can understand easily and also these descriptions will be like some suggestions and guidelines for understanding digital literacy.

The most successful features of this work are the clearly visual design and closely connection with the core issue of this element. I would like to improve how the grades system works if undertake the task again. To have more detailed category of the final results and different levels.

[totallyinnerperfection]

Gilet Jaunes: Digital literacy and social movements in question

Digital technology is constantly evolving. Every day brings a lot of changes. Does the digital promote citizen action or does its use have little impact on the commitment to serve the common good? The new generations would be able to intuitively use the tools of the Web, which are claimed to be “digital natives”.

 Every generation has a million faces and so many voices. On the one hand, such “digital natives” have their special model to expressing their voices. They have the essential access and the ability to create media for self-expression on the social media platform. Digital media enables digital natives an alternative form of social movement participation (Hargittai, 2009). In this blog, I would like to design them as “participatory audience”. Evidently, the development of social media and digital technology does effectively provide tools for audiences to engage themselves into social movements such as Gilets Jaunes[1] (Yellow Vest). This is a good example to better illustrate the concept of digital literacy and audience’s social participation with social media. The concept of “participatory audience” is raised by British scholar Livingston, under the context of media converge and diverge (Livingston, 2013). Even the social reality is mediated by the emergence of new media platforms. “Digital natives” have the access and the ability to create social media platforms for self-expression during the process of social movements, which is just the case of Gilets Jaunes.

 The movement of Gilets Jaunes across several months in France is initiated and organised on social media platform. During this process, digital natives and audiences become participants of the social movements. They could directly intervene and influence the development of the event. They could express their demands and appeals, forcing the government to respond and to react. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms are frontlines of the movements. It is evident that the whole movement is originated from online appeal, at the same time, it is organised across the social network. Digital natives and audiences become the creator of online contents in terms of the events, messages, videos or topics (Napoli, 2011). The use of hashtag such as #GiletsJaunes symbolise people’s engagement into the social movement across the online platform. People try to use the #GiletsJaunes to collect people with the same appeals and the same purpose into the social movement.

 Figure1. The Hashtag #GiletsJaunes of Twitter (Source: Twitter)

 This online tool is provided by the development of digital media, which is supposed to be mastered people in this movement, demonstrating their level of digital literacy. The more participants joining the same hashtag, the easier it is become a prevailing and hot topic. More people would be attracted into the movement and the discussion, accelerating the process of the collective activity. I assume that the participation of Gilets Jaunes into the social movement is mediated, which is an alternative approach to engage in democracy (Hargittai, 2002).  

 Reflecting this issue through the perspective of digital literacy. By definition, digital literacy refers to the process of teaching and learning about technology and the use of technology (Ribble and Bailey, 2007). This blog assumes that the Gilets Jaunes in this movements are digital natives with digital literacy, because they have essential features of “digital literacy”. Apart from the essential access to online platforms and creating online contents with hashtags and technical tools, these digital natives also knows well internal logics of social media platform. They engage themselves into social media culture and operate within the cultural structure (Justenhoven, 2017). The digital natives know well operation logics of the online environment, such as the dissemination of information through social media, the editing and publication of contents, the sharing of information. Gilets Jaunes know well the different function of social media platforms. For example, different from the hashtag on Twitter, they establish online groups and tagging function on Facebook. People could join the group and engage in the collective social movements with tagging and sharing. Digital natives are familiar with the purposes of various online tools and how they are different or similar to each other (Justenhoven, 2017).

Figure 2. Gilets Jaunes group on Facebook (Source: Facebook)

 Compared to Facebook and Twitter, Gilets Jaunes use less of YouTube and Instagram in the social movement organisation, showing their digital literacy and capacity of using online tools. People organised an online “imagined community” and the movement goes from online to offline spaces. Different from Justenhoven’s online community, I prefer to consider it as a developing process, without the constraints of time and space. There is “fluidity”, “complexity” and “uncertainty” behind the online and offline activities. There is inherent links between digital literacy and the organisation of social movement. This is also what Justenhoven mentioned as “civic” function of digital literacy, where people participate in social movement of democratic process online. People join a larger movement through media organisation which is larger than themselves. In the social movement and democratic appeals of Gilets Jaunes, the digital literacy becomes an indispensable factor to determine the cause. On the other hand, the media literacy also influences people’s construction of the social movements without breaching the limits of laws.

 However, I cast doubt on the increasing digital literacy. It should be noted that Facebook and Twitter are not absolute neutral. Apart from the above seemingly positive progress of “citizen participation”, I intend to raise another question about the digital literacy, its opposite side, the digital illiteracy. People are not born with digital literacy. Apart from the “digital natives”, a large number of people are digital immigrants, who do not belong to the net generation. For this group of people, there is a gap or transition between traditional and new media. People acquire the knowledge of digital media, making them in favour of a simple unlimited access to the Internet.

 Here, I intend to raise the concept of digital illiteracy. The term “illiteracy” is necessarily essentializing in its diversity, to observe and question it on itself. Did the media and other think thanks listen to all the French youths before stating that today’s teenager is a “digital native”? I recognise that most young students are disconcerted by instructions as simple as open a browser, I have serious doubts on the fact that the handling of digital tools is, at home, an innate competence. There is gap of digital literacy between generations and between different social classes. As mentioned by Schradie (2018), when journalists and social movements organisers rely on social networks, it is in itself a form of social exclusion. They favour people who have the time, resources and skills to be online frequently and those who understand how algorithms work (Hargittai, 2009). The Internet has not become this magical place where social stratification evaporates, because social class is the most important demographic element in the production of online content.

 I would like to pose the following questions: the movement of #GiletsJaunes is it a social exclusion to people of “digital illiteracy? Are those who are disconnected and who have no access to online resource excluded from democratic movements and citizenship? Those who are disconnected and those who are still convinced that they can exercise one’s citizenship away from artificial screens and intelligences are considered as “numerical illiteracy” in the digital media era. Every social change that takes root on digital lands and spreads in real life reminds them of the sad defeat of their thought. Today, refusing to participate in the reproduction of content on the social media platform seems to get away from the real world. New York Times would consult reactions on twitter to assess their quality of subjects and articles. As people we shape an increasingly connected world in which digital exclusion leaves “numerical illiteracy” on the edge of the path. People who are defined as “numerical illiteracy” are condemned to be “invisible” or “inaudible” in the GiletsJaunes movements. This is a whole cohort of fragile population in the digital world, who are condemned to be “digital immigrants”. This has become an obstacle of participating in democratic. Therefore, there is observed inequalities on the digital media usage.

 In the end, another critical and pessimist perspective could enhance our understanding of digital literacy with the social framework. Fundamentally, the social class frames the competence and usage of digital tools. And behind this observation, we could introduce the approach of Bourdieu, which elaborates how power relations and reproductions of social inequalities are actually at the centre of digital tools. People’s social status builds and constructs their way of being and behaviour vis-à-vis the use of the Internet and new media (Schradie, 2018). I assume that social class are not soluble with the digital literacy. That is, the digital literacy could not totally reverse the existed social class order. Most of the participants in the movement of #GiletsJaunes are from unprivileged social class appealing for rights. Some of the contents by Giletsjaunes are not of high-quality, which would have negative social impacts.

 In the public discourse, responsible digital citizen should enhance their numerical literacy when it comes to the participation and engagement of social movements. Civic participation is one central goal of numerical literacy. Through the analysis of #GiletJaunes across online media, I expect a more regulated online democratic participation. Digital literacy also involves the skill of analysis, questioning, evaluate the online content, distinguishing credible sources, etc. These are essential to effectively use the online tools and promote the democratic process.

[1] Here we prefer to use the original name of the movement.