Rethinking Digital Literacy
Published on 24. October 2025
Book
Hardback
148 pages
978-1-0353-4203-7 (ISBN)
Description
Applying novel theoretical perspectives to key current topics, this book aims to rethink and redefine our understanding of digital literacy. Guy Merchant underscores the pressing need to look critically at the impacts and complexities of new aspects of digital communication as it has become increasingly significant in modern life.
In this cutting-edge book, Merchant explores how digital literacy has become an integral part of everyday work and leisure, used for official, unofficial, formal and non-formal purposes. The book raises issues that are central to the development of digital literacy in policy and practice, and emphasises its position as a distinct orientation in research and scholarship. Chapters consider a variety of established and emerging communicative practices, including the work of computational agents such as algorithms, AI and chatbots. In this critical contribution to the literature, Merchant evaluates the social and material dimensions of digital literacy and includes illustrative examples of digital communication in context, presenting a sociomaterial account of new literacy practices.
Rethinking Digital Literacy is a crucial resource for students and academics in education and education policy, as well as in literacy studies and communication studies. Its forward-thinking insights into educational technology will also benefit policymakers, practitioners and researchers.
In this cutting-edge book, Merchant explores how digital literacy has become an integral part of everyday work and leisure, used for official, unofficial, formal and non-formal purposes. The book raises issues that are central to the development of digital literacy in policy and practice, and emphasises its position as a distinct orientation in research and scholarship. Chapters consider a variety of established and emerging communicative practices, including the work of computational agents such as algorithms, AI and chatbots. In this critical contribution to the literature, Merchant evaluates the social and material dimensions of digital literacy and includes illustrative examples of digital communication in context, presenting a sociomaterial account of new literacy practices.
Rethinking Digital Literacy is a crucial resource for students and academics in education and education policy, as well as in literacy studies and communication studies. Its forward-thinking insights into educational technology will also benefit policymakers, practitioners and researchers.
Reviews / Votes
'Postdigital literacies, riding in the slipstream of digital technologies, require humankind to not only enter into new relationships with digital technology, but to recognize the way in which the virtual and material worlds it produces move with and affect each other, Merchant compellingly argues. Carefully and artfully written, Rethinking Digital Literacy offers helpful, hopeful, and tangible ideas for intentionally and responsibly navigating an ever-emerging postdigital terrain.' -- Kimberly Lenters, University of Calgary, Canada 'Rethinking Digital Literacy is a revelation. Far beyond the confines of technological determinism, it boldly rethinks the social and material fabric of digital literacy, shedding light on its hidden layers. Incisive, accessible, and deeply engaging, Guy Merchant's book is an essential guide to the more-than-human tapestry of postdigital culture.'> -- Kathy A. Mills, Australian Catholic University, Australia 'Merchant has always broken with tradition and the status quo to make us think more conceptually, dynamically, and humanely about digital literacy. This groundbreaking book is no exception, Rethinking Digital Literacy shows readers how much thinking and being with the digital is part of the patchwork of life. Inflected with his singular, expressive writing voice filled with rich anecdotes of postdigital life, it is a one-of-a-kind book on the modern state of communication. It is surely destined to sit on bookshelves with dog-eared pages.' -- Jennifer Rowsell, University of Sheffield, UKMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cheltenham
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-0353-4203-7 (9781035342037)
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
Person
Guy Merchant, Emeritus Professor, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Content
Contents
Preface vii
1 Changing patterns of communication 1
2 Digital communication in context 16
3 Literacy: new ways of making meaning 32
4 Everyday digital practices in the lives of children and young
people 45
5 Digital materialities 60
6 New perspectives 73
7 Ethics in postdigital culture 87
8 Literacy in a postdigital world 99
9 Rethinking digital literacy 112
References 129
Preface vii
1 Changing patterns of communication 1
2 Digital communication in context 16
3 Literacy: new ways of making meaning 32
4 Everyday digital practices in the lives of children and young
people 45
5 Digital materialities 60
6 New perspectives 73
7 Ethics in postdigital culture 87
8 Literacy in a postdigital world 99
9 Rethinking digital literacy 112
References 129