This policy brief is part of CIGI’s project on freedom of thought: Legitimate Influence or Unlawful Manipulation? Find out more at: www.cigionline.org/fot
Policy Brief No. 10 — February 2024
Digital Media Literacy as a Precondition for Engaged Digital Citizenship Kara Brisson-Boivin and Matthew Johnson Key Points → As digital media tools have become essential to acting on and communicating about civic issues, and networked platforms have become the primary fora for political discussion and action, digital media literacy has become a precondition of civic engagement and freedom of thought. → Some features of networked digital media complicate the development of digital media literacy because of their lack of transparency; their influence and decision making are opaque to users and may even be so to their designers. → To ensure an informed and engaged public, we need a commitment at both federal and provincial/territorial levels to update and support digital media literacy in all of its aspects — from guaranteeing access to empowering civic engagement — in both youth and adults.
Introduction Digital media literacy — the ability to critically, effectively and responsibly access, use, understand and engage with media of all kinds — is an essential part of civic engagement. The advent of inexpensive and portable tools for making media, along with networked platforms for distributing it, has made it possible for nearly anyone to make and distribute their own media works; and for people to find allies, to organize, and to share their opinions on civic and political issues as broadly focused as the conflict in Israel and Gaza (Molloy 2023) or as narrow as school lockdown drills (Carillo and Lee 2023). Beyond using digital tools to participate in civic engagement, digital spaces are more and more where civic and political engagement happen. Mainstream online spaces such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, as well as more niche platforms such as Reddit and WhatsApp, now play significant roles in determining what ideas are seen as falling into Daniel C. Hallin’s spheres of news journalism and its rhetorical framing: consensus, deviance and legitimate controversy (Hallin 1989, 116–18). For young people in particular, these online spaces are also frequently communities with norms and values that may be as important in shaping their views as mass media or the offline communities they are a part of. The role of networked digital media in civic engagement is a mixed blessing. Too often, the norms and values of these online spaces tolerate or even encourage misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and