Literacy, borders and digital culture

Abstract

Digital literacies, also referred to as new literacies, establish border zones among knowledge domains as well as among diverse social practices and among semiotic and media systems. Such border zones can be seen as spaces for negotiation and exchange, that is, for interaction and overlaps, but also as loci of conflict and contestable delimitations. The open, complex nature of such literacies, which both produces and results in connections that are not always predictable or controllable challenges traditional conceptualizations of literacy, in technicist and sociocultural traditions, as well as the usual methodological and empirical formulations in literacy studies. This project aims, first, to investigate and help enhance a conception of digital literacy that is relational and interactive - and, therefore, non-reductionistic - on the grounds of operative concepts such as border and network and of recent theoretical developments in the Humanities that address the relations among technology, society and culture. Secondly, it sets out to identify activities and artifacts (both physical and symbolic) that support what one could call boundary practices, that is, practices that enable the appropriation of digital literacies in diverse contexts and domains, and which potentialize transformations in traditional literacies. The identities and interpretations of the practitioners are taken into account in this effort, as a means of bringing the agency and reflexivity of the social subject to the foreground in such dynamics. Results expected include theoretical and practical subsidies for the development of methodologies in teaching, systems and interface design, and leadership development related to digital inclusion in Brazil. (AU)