This essay aims to explore and discuss the basic function and property of network literacy, as a new concept emerged with the rapid development of the Internet in 21^st century. Especially, I will focus on Adrian Miles’s argument that ‘..networked literacies are marked by your participation as a peer in these flows and networks – you contribute to them and in turn can share what others provide.’(Miles, 2007). As he mentioned, every individual can contribute to network literacy, but the question is how? How do we, as users rather than developer of network, actually contribute to network literacy? This is the first key issues that will be discussed in this essay. After that, I will then relate it to another issue: If we do have the ability to contribute to them, how shall we, as future media makers, treat and use it for the media industry?

 

First, to understand the meaning of network literacy is crucial before making any further research and judgment. Earlier, people described it as the skills or knowledge of using computer to access the Internet and locate information. For example, as Charles R. McClure argued ‘…the ability to identify, access and use electronic information from the network…’ (McClure, 1997). However, with the incredible development of the Internet, these definitions have been assimilated by information literacy or computer literacy because they no longer precisely reflect on the various property of network. Therefore, Miles offered his definition ‘(network literacy is) recognizing that content and its containers.. and that we weave these together very easily using simple protocols that were developed to allow ‘inter’ and ‘intra’ communication between different sorts of Internet services.’(Miles, 2007). Apparently, this definition, compared with the former one, emphasizes the understanding on how the network works and functions rather than how to use it for a certain need. And this is also what I strongly believe: the network literacies are not only the skills like how to post an article online, how to add your friends Facebook, but most importantly, the understanding and knowledge of how it allows us to do these things by few simple clicks.

 

Here is a short video on the definition of Network Media

 

Return to the question itself: how do we, as peers in the system, contribute to them? Again, according to Miles’s argument, ‘be ‘good’ at network literacies is to contribute as much as it is to consume.’ (Miles, 2007). This basically means you use network to find solution or information you need through reading the knowledge and experience shared by other users. And as the same time, you do your contribution by posting the stuff which you may have better understandings of so others can benefit from it. I strongly agree with his point. In my opinion, I do think this reciprocal, sharing mode is the basis of the sustainable development of the Internet communities. Through this mode, the distinction between consuming and creating, which usually considered as the common problem in print and other literacies, is reduced to great extent.

 

However, sharing your voice is not the only way to contribute to network literacy. Now there are numerous small, useful, and innovative apps that you can easily download (or even don’t need to) and use on your phone, laptop and notepad. They enable user to connect, access and link to different websites to update, post or doing anything you can do on each individual one. Through this multi-platform tool, the things are getting much easier for users who are activated on different social platforms. My first impression of this is good idea, definitely helpful. But I forgot it very soon until before I started to write this essay, it remained me of what else we as peers are able to contribute the system. Indeed, designing those wonderful apps are the developers’ jobs, but to perfect them, to test if the innovative idea is actually practicable, they need our participations and feedbacks. Imagine without the enthusiasm of those 1,200 Harvard students who signed up the Facebook on its first day, and the following network literate university students around the world (Phillips, 2007), would Facebook become a phenomenon and change our lives? A great idea might lead to great success which makes our society progress, or be ignored and end up with nothing. It not only depends on the creator’s promotion and creativity, but also the attitudes and reactions of users. For the potential ideas, as a network literate peer, trying is contributing.

 

Then come to the second question: As a future media maker, how shall we use our abilities of recognizing and contributing to network literacies for the future media industry? Besides sharing and participating, with our professional skills and further understandings on the communication technologies, we are able to make more differences. Firstly, be sensitive to information, which means being able to catch the specific, useful content from the millions of information flows generated every second. With this ability, a media maker should also notice which form of media attracts people better than others in a specific filed, and how it works. For example, Niconico is a Japanese popular video sharing website which has 23,690,000 registered users according to the data released in October 2011 (Dwango, 2011). The main users are those network literate young people who love to share experience of Anime, Manga and games. In 2008, it won an Honorary Mention of the Digital Communities category at Prix Ars Electronica ( Prix Ars Electronica, 2008). Behind these successes, they have a distinct concept: making the comments overlaid directly onto the video, synced to a specific playback time. Through this idea, when you are watch a scene of a video, you can see all the comments on this specific scene come out on the screen from other viewers all around the world, which creates an unique watching experience. This is a good lesson for us to learn and think. The success of Niconico depends on so many different aspects. In my opinion, it is mainly caused by those media makers/developers’ deep and keen understanding of network literacies and the Internet culture.

Thanks to the contributions of network literate people, we now have a rich community which is still developing and changing itself. I usually consider the responsibility of media makers as making efficient, friendly, real media works, and through the modern technologies, enabling more and more people from different backgrounds to see them, think about them, criticize them and share their views with no barrier. It was only a concept decades before, but now with the power of Internet, it comes true and we are all the witnesses. Besides those I have mentioned above, there are absolutely other ways to contribute to network literacies, to improve the system and industry with our efforts as peers and future media makers. Looking for them is as important as the skills we learn from school.

 

References

Prix Ars Electronica. (2008, July 1). Retrieved from Ars Electronica   Prix Honorary Mentions: http://web.archive.org/web/20080701082701/http://www.aec.at/en/prix/winners_honorary.asp

Dwango. (2011, December 24). Retrieved from 2011年9月期決算説明会:   http://pdf.irpocket.com/C3715/oWM7/Jq9Q/f4sZ.pdf

Miles, A. (2007). Network Literacy: The   New Path to Knowledge. Screen Education Autum, 24-30.

Phillips, S. (2007, July 25). A brief   history of Facebook. Retrieved from The Guardian:   http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia

McClure,   Charles R. “Network literacy in an electronic society: An educational   disconnect.” Current perspectives. Information and behavior 6 (1997): 403-439

 

 

Earlier time, people usually describe this term as the skills of using computer or other devices to access the Internet, locate information. This definition is not wrong, but nowadays, it might not precisely reflect on the meaning of network literacy anymore because of the incredibly rapid development of Internet communities. According to Adrian Miles’s opinion, the word network literacy (or literacies) now more relate to ‘recognising that content and its containers, whether web pages, blog posts, photos, video or any other media type, are distributed across the network, and that we weave these together very easily using simple protocols that were developed to allow ‘inter’ and ‘intra’ communication between different sorts of Internet services.'(Miles, 2007). In another word, the network literacies are not only the skills like how to post an article online, how to add your friends Facebook, but most importantly, the understanding and knowledge of how it allows us to do these things by few simple clicks. So in relation to my critical essay, I would argue from this angel, to explore and discuss the questions like how we as peers and most importantly, future media workers, will contribute to the literacies. especially on the media industry?

Click to read a good article on Technological Determinism on Mass Communication.

I have just done a presentation for communication technologies and history, which is about the Technological Determinism theory. It is a group presentation, so we have discussed both two sides – the people believe in Technological Determinism, think technologies are the determining power which directly shape our society and development; and the opposite, who argues the technologies are affected by social forces and do not directly determine, but partly affect, our society.

But how we finally can get a conclusion or answer from these very theoretical stuff? Examples in human history would be persuasive enough. For instance, the invention of TV, is it a independent thing or happened because of the need of the people at that time? And computer as well, is it because the fast development of technologies require more advanced calculation method?

But still people have different opinions on those things. The argument will go on and probably will not have a answer because we are just too complicated for ourselves.