ABSTRACT
Digital literacies are being fundamentally reshaped by new practices involving increasingly ubiquitous technologies and the growing capacities of institutions, corporations, communities, and even individuals for the collection and display of big data. In considering how digital literacy is defined, Diamond Reynolds' powerful use of live streaming technologies on her mobile phone would generally be considered a performance that did not require any special skills. The visualization and diagrammatization of the world described here is a complex technical act involving a variety of actors and technologies that ultimately possess the persuasive power to shape people's engagement and interaction with the world itself. Digital literacy efforts also must acknowledge that the distorted norms of internet communication itself—which grew out of practices developed decades ago on bulletin boards, online forums, and ranking sites—may contribute to racialized and sexualized violence.
