Messages in the Medium: Modernism and Self-Awareness in the Digital Age*

In this article, Annie Schultz argues that there are messages to be found in mediums. As an addition to media literacy education in the digital information era, Schultz joins in conversation with philosophers of education who have turned to aesthetics and visual culture studies as a way of interpreting digital misinformation. She suggests that themes in art and issues raised in art criticism provide tools for understanding critically how digital media impacts us aesthetically and affectively. Modernism, in particular, is a movement in art that offers interpretive tools for understanding how all the mediums of our information-fueled world impinge on our lived experience. By attending to mediums, we can develop the self-awareness necessary to understand critically how digital mediums influence how we make meaning.