ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses prevalent discourses surrounding the internet’s ‘brokenness’ and proposes a reconceptualisation of digital literacies through the lens of repair. It advocates moving beyond conventional approaches to digital literacies, advancing a more systemic perspective that acknowledges the embodied, emotional, social, and political dimensions of engaging with technology. Building on a critical review of previous approaches to digital literacies, the chapter situates the framework developed in this book within the theoretical traditions of mediated discourse analysis, socio-materialist and posthumanist perspectives on literacy, science and technology studies, and ‘maker/hacker literacies’. It proposes seven ‘sites of repair’—action, attention, affect, affinity, visibility, truth, and humanity—as domains where teachers, students and researchers can confront the ‘brokenness’ of the internet and engage in educationally and socially transformative practices of repair. The chapter ends with a discussion of how the rise of generative AI presents particular challenges and opportunities for literacy teachers, arguing that generative AI has arrived ‘already broken—both amplifying existing forms of sociotechnical brokenness and creating new vulnerabilities. Rather than framing AI through binary discourses of salvation or threat, the chapter proposes using this ‘AI moment’ as a chance to reimagine human–technology entanglements and develop new kinds of ‘human literacies’.
