Postdigital Literacies in Everyday Life and Pedagogic Practices

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, we contribute to literacy and education studies by proposing three overarching features (elements) of postdigital literacy events, informed by an ecological, relational, and sociomaterial framing of literacy. These features are: (1) entanglement, (2) digital materiality, and (3) spatiotemporality. Entanglement is about how learning entangles with our social, cultural, and material contexts through communicative acts, which include an understanding of media entanglements through interface seams(/seaminess) and transmediality. Digital materiality reminds us that digital media are also material, including notions of digital matter, instantiation, representation, and significance. The feature of spatiotemporality accounts for spatiotemporal flow and presence across online/offline environments, concerned with postdigital reconfigurations of time, space, and place. All three elements incorporate challenges around equity, power, and values. We also advance theory-in-practice by providing examples of how postdigital literacy features/elements manifest in pedagogy and everyday life, based on our experiences as academics working in diverse contexts. This work can support international research, teaching, and knowledge around how media practices interrelate through postdigital communication and literacy experiences, what that means, and with what effects, within a vision of education for mutually enriching planetary futures.