ABSTRACT
In tandem with broader efforts to digitalise education, policymakers and publics have also advocated for greater integration of digital competencies into curriculum and instruction. These efforts travel under different names, but they share associations with the popular umbrella category, digital literacy. This chapter traces the multivalent meanings attached to this term: as practices for empowering learners to (1) use digital media effectively; (2) protect themselves from online exploitation; and (3) cultivate their capacities for work in emerging platform economies. It then considers how the term’s enduring appeal hinges on categorical conflations: first, of complex sociotechnical assemblages as ‘texts’, amenable to agentive use or resistance from individual users, and, second, of corporate ‘future of work’ imaginaries as inevitable ends that education ought to serve. Rather than obviating the project of media education, we argue that the shortcomings of ‘digital literacy’ suggest a shift in idiom – from ‘literacy’ to ‘ecology’ – and offer an alternate orientation from which educators might shape a pedagogical programme keyed to the social, technical and political-economic imperatives that drive platform ecosystems in and beyond education. We conclude by highlighting emerging research and resources that can contribute to building and sustaining such a programme.
