Introducing “Media Quiteracy”
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By Michelle Ciccone and Katie Day Good
We’re excited to share an article we wrote called “Media quiteracy: Why digital disconnection belongs in the media literacy curriculum,” which was recently published in the Journal of Media Literacy Education.
In the article, we introduce what we’ve termed “media quiteracy,” which we define as “the idea that valuable learning can happen through the action of refusing to take up new media, or in intentionally leaving it behind” (p. 152). Media quiteracy is a play on media literacy of course. We see media quiteracy as a useful and even necessary intervention because, we argue, media and digital literacy education tends to have a bias towards participation—equating media literacy with media use.
But core to our argument is the idea that non-use of media technologies can also be a deeply agentic act, and a legitimate enactment of media and digital literacy in and of itself. What’s more, media quiteracy is also reflective of people’s (including our students’) actual media practices and behaviors, as people decide to stop, pause, or scale back their use of particular media all the time, in big and small ways. In the article, we write,
“We flesh out and articulate this idea of media quiteracy not only because we see informed, considered, and intentional acts of refusal, abstention, and disconnection as viable options for individuals and communities, but also because we see insistence on the viability of non-use as a necessary intervention in this moment of increased technoskepticism that has arisen amidst the continued proliferation of digital and persuasive technologies in education and community life. As we see it, making room for media quiteracy in media literacy education could empower students to not only flex their agency against machines and explore the social and ethical implications of their media use and disuse, but also to question the cultural, institutional, and economic assumptions that have led ‘participation’ in platforms to be treated as a precondition for functioning in our society” (p. 151-152).
Ultimately, we see non-use as its own kind of participation, as non-use becomes “an opportunity for new possibilities for engagement” (p. 156). We conclude the article by writing,
“By examining the opportunities for and barriers to non-use and non-participation via media quiteracy, we might confront the limitations to digital literacy education and research in moving beyond the decisions that can be made between user and tool interface. By experiencing how the act of leaving media behind can be an act of learning and action in community with others, students gain one more tool by which to reimagine relations between people, institutions, and technologies” (p. 161).
You can read the article here for a fuller exploration of “media quiteracy,” including what we think media quiteracy looks like in practice. We also go into a bit of the history of “the right to not-learn” with technology, and dig into what we see as the potential barriers to teaching media quiteracy.
And if you’d like to talk more about “media quiteracy,” join us for a webinar with the Media Education Lab on July 17 at 12 pm ET. You can register for the webinar here.