Page 118 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

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together an infographic How To Spot Fake News,33 which identifies eight steps for discovering the verifiability of the content of the messages we receive daily on our screens.
Twenty-first century skills and new literacy
Other organisations have expressed the same intention to broaden the content and scope of literacy programmes and processes, such as the European Parliament, which declared that:
Reading and writing alone are no longer sufficient competences in our increasingly hyperconnected information society and digital economy. Neither is it sufficient to simply provide computers, smartphones and other technical devices alone in order to solve the problem of an upcoming digital divide in the population. New competencies and literacies have to be developed, especially informa- tion literacy, media literacy, computer literacy and cultural literacy.34
This broadening relates to the idea of metalit- eracy, which extends the scope of traditional information to include collaborative production and the exchange of information in digital environments. This metaliteracy has progres- sively embraced new layers including information literacy, a term coined to designate “the group of abilities, skills, conducts and attitudes that enable an individual to effectively seek, access, assess and use the most relevant information in any format for decision making, problem solving, personal and social development and democratic participation, etc.”, according to the Information Literacy Working Group set up by the Spanish board of libraries, Consejo de Cooperación Bibliotecaria.
In the recent documents published by this group, the term ALFIN (alfabetización informacional, Spanish for information literacy) is associated with AMI (alfabetización en medios de infor- mación, literacy in information media) to enrich
the significance of the proposal, which stems from the idea that
access to information and communication technol- ogies (ICTs) and the Internet is essential but not sufficient. Technology alone is not much use; it is necessary to learn to use it correctly to obtain the greatest possible potential. Digital literacy must
be developed as part of information literacy. It is necessary for educators, librarians and rulers to recognise that information literacy, and not only digital literacy, is the key to educating the so-called information society.35
As early as 2012, the conclusions of the Council of the European Union on multiple literacy36 outlined an approach that integrates reading and writing with digital and media competence and stresses the need for students to seek, discriminate critically and produce information in today’s converging formats and media. These conclusions define literacy as “encompassing both reading and writing competences for understanding, using and critically evaluating different forms of information, including written, printed, electronic texts and images, and cover- ing baseline, functional and multiple literacy.”
These three aspects underlined by the Council document highlight the importance and scope of the impact of multiple literacy on both people and society as a whole:
• Multiple literacy is a crucial life skill that empowers the individual citizen to develop capacities of reflection, oral expression, critical thinking and empathy, boosting personal development, self-confidence, a sense of identity and full participation in a digital and knowledge economy and society.
• Increasing digitisation calls for even higher standards of multiple literacy, among others the ability to critically assess texts, to deal with multiple forms of text, to decode images and to compare and integrate dif- ferent pieces of information. What is more,
READING
Readers in the digital age