
Innovations and Challenges in Digital Literacies
Literacies of Repair
Rodney H. Jones(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 29. September 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
226 pages
978-0-367-34857-1 (ISBN)
Description
Innovations and Challenges in Digital Literacies questions whether the current theoretical frameworks and pedagogical practices around digital literacies are sufficient to confront the technological, social, and political crises around digital media that we are experiencing today.
Drawing on extensive research in digital literacies, discourse analysis, and sociotechnical systems, Jones reimagines digital literacies not simply as skills for making meaning and navigating information but as a more holistic project of figuring out how to 'fix' what is 'broken' about the internet and our broader societies. The book focuses on seven key 'sites of repair'-action, attention, affect, affinity, visibility, truth, and humanity-each site offering insights into how agency, emotions, relationships, knowledge, and 'intelligence' emerge through our entanglements with digital technologies. The text aims to provoke debate about how we define digital literacies in an age of political polarisation and rapid technological change. It provides powerful tools for teaching, learning, and living more ethically with digital media.
With this book, Jones invites readers to see themselves not just as users of digital technology, but as fixers of broken systems-and caretakers of our increasingly fragile world. This approach provides a framework for educators, students, and researchers to collaboratively develop practical strategies to challenge the logics of technological and social systems, cultivating new literacies for an age of online misinformation, algorithmic governance, and generative AI.
Open Access for this book was funded by the University of Reading, UK.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Drawing on extensive research in digital literacies, discourse analysis, and sociotechnical systems, Jones reimagines digital literacies not simply as skills for making meaning and navigating information but as a more holistic project of figuring out how to 'fix' what is 'broken' about the internet and our broader societies. The book focuses on seven key 'sites of repair'-action, attention, affect, affinity, visibility, truth, and humanity-each site offering insights into how agency, emotions, relationships, knowledge, and 'intelligence' emerge through our entanglements with digital technologies. The text aims to provoke debate about how we define digital literacies in an age of political polarisation and rapid technological change. It provides powerful tools for teaching, learning, and living more ethically with digital media.
With this book, Jones invites readers to see themselves not just as users of digital technology, but as fixers of broken systems-and caretakers of our increasingly fragile world. This approach provides a framework for educators, students, and researchers to collaboratively develop practical strategies to challenge the logics of technological and social systems, cultivating new literacies for an age of online misinformation, algorithmic governance, and generative AI.
Open Access for this book was funded by the University of Reading, UK.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Reviews / Votes
"Rodney Jones has written the book our moment needs. Literacies of Repair refuses the easy story that 'the internet broke us' and instead offers a humane, systemic way to mend-beginning with how people actually live, feel, learn, and act together. Jones moves beyond checklist 'digital skills' to show how action, attention, affect, affinity, visibility, truth, and humanity intertwine in real practices. This is not a cynical autopsy of platforms; it's a design manual for communities who want to reclaim agency-what he calls agencing-and cultivate cultures of care."James Paul Gee, Regents' Professor, Emeritus, Arizona State University
"Rodney Jones offers a bold, pathbreaking vision of digital literacies as practices not just of critique but of repair. Urging us to confront the brokenness of the internet, and reorienting literacy towards care, agency, and collective action, this book is a powerful call to rediscover what truly matters in a digitally mediated, fractured world."
Ron Darvin Associate Professor, The University of British Columbia
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
363 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-367-34857-1 (9780367348571)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2025
Routledge
€52.49
Available for download

E-Book
09/2025
Routledge
€52.49
Available for download

Book
09/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€165.20
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Rodney H. Jones is Professor of Sociolinguistics and Digital Media in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading, UK. He has published widely in the fields of digital literacies, health communication, and language and creativity.
Content
Chapter 1: Literacies of repair; Chapter 2: Action; Chapter 3: Attention; Chapter 4: Affect; Chapter 5: Affinity; Chapter 6: Visibility; Chapter 7: Truth; Chapter 8: Humanity; Postscript: 'To human is a verb'