“How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”
If you asked me before I did this week’s readings if I thought I was across all things ‘Internet’ and ‘networking’ I would probably say
“Yeah sure, I know enough!’
And yes, I do certainly know enough.
I am very capable of navigating my way from Netflix, to Facebook, to my RMIT dashboard (usually in reverse order) and can share, and save, and download.
I know that typing ‘www.’ is the first step to get to almost every web page (even if you don’t really have to do that anymore) and that it stands for ‘World Wide Web.’
However, after finishing the first two readings for the week, I felt, using the language of Miles (2012), network illiterate.
In the interest of complete transparency, most of what I read about networks and Web 2.0 went straight over my head. I found myself lost in a web (pardon the pun) of media and technology jargon and honestly felt very overwhelmed. I think this was compounded by the fact that we did not actually have a lecture or tutorial this week, so we did not have the chance to dissect it all.
I therefore felt a sense of relief when I came across Adrian Miles’ ‘Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge.’
Using the analogy of print literacy, Miles was able to convey, in a more simple sense, the notion that network literacy is ‘being able to participate as a peer within the emerging knowledge networks that are now the product of the Internet’ (Miles 2012, p203) and to have a ‘much deeper understanding of the implications’ (Miles 2012, p201) of this participation.
Essentially, Miles highlighted to me something which I was already aware of, but had stopped consciously thinking about. The notion that all content, be that ‘web pages, blog posts, photos, video or any other media type’ (Miles 2012, p203), which is distributed across the network is weaved together to ‘allow ‘inter’ and ‘intra’ communication between different sorts of Internet services’ (Miles 2012, p203).
For example, on Facebook I can share posts from Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and Spotify. Scrolling through my Facebook feed right now, I can see links to events, sponsored advertisements for brands, my friend’s posts and photos, memes posted by pages which I have “liked,” videos and news paper articles. I also have the ability to share “What’s on [my] mind.”
Facebook is therefore facilitating the ‘collecting and sharing of information between disparate individuals or groups’ (Miles 2012, p205).
I think Jill Walker’s (2005) definition of network literacy resonates with me best, as she describes it as…
‘linking to what other people have written and inviting comments…understanding a kind of writing that is a social collaborative process…[and] learning how to write with an awareness that anyone may read it.’
Reference list:
Miles, A 2012, Soft Cinematic Hypertext (Other Literacies). RMIT University, (Section: Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge pp. 201-208)
Walker, J (2005), ‘Weblogs: Learning in Public,’ On the Horizon, vol. 1, pp. 112-118,