Digital Literacy or Literacies

The author seems to overemphasize the importance of considering digital literacy in the plural form. Literacy means the ability to read and write, or knowledge that relates to a specified subject. Therefore, I think that digital literacy is one of many types of "literacies", but that within the digital literacy category, as with all literacy categories, there are only plural competencies or skills that construct the subject literacy. These skills include, writing, speaking, learning vocabulary, empathy, compassion, awareness, and a long list of others. The skills required to achieve digital literacy are definitely in the plural, but the effective use of them constructs a knowledge or literacy in a particular subject. It is as if the author is using the terms "skills" and "literacies" interchangeably, which seems incorrect to me. He also states that in digital literacy, it is important to differentiate the physical, technical skills required to navigate through the digital wonderland, from those of understanding what they see in the digital world. When this is done, there is only the comprehending and interpreting of the data that is left, which hopefully results in subject literacy.



The image is a great one, as it relates to the article's point that a consumer of digital information must consider the various sociocultural aspects at play in the formation of the digital information they consume, and how such sociocultural influences color the data they consume.