Critical Digital Literacy

Abstract

This chapter overviews critical digital literacy (CDL). The concept of CDL has been used to describe literacy practices which (1) lead to the creation of digital texts that interrogate issues of power, representation, and agency in the world and (2) critically interrogate digital media and technologies themselves. Current framings of CDL can be traced back to the sociocultural “turn” in literacy studies, the politically engaged critical literacy movements of the 1970s, and a more recent interest in understanding how language, literacy, and power are mediated through digital technologies. While some critiques of CDL have been grounded in historical resistance to critical literacy more broadly, others focus on issues related to access to digital media and technologies themselves. In response, CDL scholars have offered models of practice that take into account the practical concerns of teachers in classrooms, while retaining a philosophical commitment to rendering visible the ideological dimensions of digital technology. Following the precedents set by scholars of the New Literacy Studies, current research in CDL has focused less on a standardization of definitions and principles, and more on everyday relations, especially in terms of how educators and students realize the production and consumption of digitally literate critical practices in their own contexts.