ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 shows how media and information literacy is oriented towards different aspects: the content of a message, its source, the technical infrastructure involved in its creation and circulation, the specific situation or social practice it is part of, and its possible effects. Where the need for media and information literacy is situated has implications for what it is seen to achieve and where its limits are located. At the core of the chapter lies a discussion of the tensions arising from different, unspoken, and sometimes normative assumptions of media and information literacy goals or their conceptual framing. The chapter provides a theoretical understanding of media and information literacy, while also reflecting on how various actors in society relate to it in different ways. Media and information literacy research often advances a contextualised understanding and sees media and information literacy as situated and embedded in specific social practices. In contrast, when advocated by professional groups – such as library associations – or promoted by international organisations – such as UNESCO – media and information literacy is treated in a more normative way as a precondition for democracy. However, being able to act in media and information literate ways and successfully make use of the information infrastructure in promoting specific interests is not only a matter for democratic forces in society. The often-normative aim of advancing democratic participation appears to contradict situated notions of a plurality of media and information literacies in which the meaning of literacy is contextually assigned. The authors draw on the concept of infrastructural meaning-making to discuss the entwinement of content and infrastructure and the significance of understanding the material-discursive relations at play, particularly in a situation where trust in public knowledge is challenged. The various tensions emerging throughout the chapter are summed up in terms of a normativity paradox in the chapter’s conclusion.
