electro-textual

The other week, my review was published in Valbec’s Fine Print Journal, reminding me that i promised to write more about some of the chapters in Lankshear & Knobel’s “Digital Literacies”. So..

Another chapter focusses on the global phenomenon that is e-Bay. i confess i know barely anything about e-bay. i am not an insider. The closest i’ve come to using it was in 2008 when the Reservoir literacy group went in to search for furniture, and one of the students tried to sell her hair extensions. That was an adventure!

In chapter 10, “Pay and Display – the digital literacies of online shoppers”,  Julia Davies examines the multiple literacies involved and talks about:

1. “insider-liness”,
2. identity work,
3. value construction, and
4. the multi-modal narratives of objects.

Davies states that authenticity of narrative and characterisation count a lot in e-Bay product descriptions, as sellers work toward making powerful texts. If you want to sell your goods, and maintain positive relationships (the reliability rating!) it’s crucial to have:

• a consistent tone,
• apparent honesty and
• a direct approach.

“Literacy is about more than accuracy” (spelling mistakes don’t really matter if you have the other elements, she implies). Being an insider is important for developing relationships and understanding the cultural values – the language of this place. Davies conducted group interviews with insiders for her research, and concluded that the values of e-Bay include: authenticity, trust, reputation and the notion of community.

There are social practices around the trading, which could be called “new literacies”. As literacy practices contain social aspects, their meanings are shaped by socio-cultural matters. Not only this, but ”texts are socio-cultural constructs”, and ”literacy is primarily something people do”.

Davies shows there are plenty of literacy skills required to participate (and provides a good and useful list, on p235).

Objects and Desires

This idea i found interesting, that: buying and selling is not only about the intrinsic value of the object, but also about “taking part in an unfolding dramatic narrative”. People purchase “the symbolic value of goods and involvement in narrative”, and material goods become semantically significant through their social history. By purchasing an item, you become part of the ongoing narrative.

Investigating the d/Discourses of the environment, Davies notes there are socially agreed “ways of being” – e-bay is a “specific discursive space, comprising multimodal discourses”: if you’re a “real eBayer” then you follow these discursive practices. This includes the importance of ratings and feedback.

discourse of Community

Community is claimed as a primary value by the marketers behind the corporation, it’s included in set of values where e-Bay addresses people as “you”, implying shared ownership. There are systems in place to support these values, eg discussion boards.

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That’s all i’ve got for now on this chapter.

i wonder if it’ll help me next time i need to help a student sell their hair extensions.. ?

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(PS: yes, Davies really gets into that academic distinction between discourse and Discourse, as set up by James Gee (?), where small d discourse is the language patterns and social practices, and Capital D Discourse is the entire social space and all the embodied literacies.)

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photo credit: (creative commons at flickr) Thanks: danielbroche, and lciewf too.

Finally!

i’ve ploughed my way through Lankshear & Knobel’s “Digital Literacies: concepts, policies and practices.” (2008)

Yes i’ve been reading it all year, but the final onslaught took me 4 days of sitting inside, during my holiday from work.. when the springtime sun was shining outside. How do i always manage to forget that academic reading can be horribly difficult!! If you’re out of practice, you need to diligently take notes on every page.. or you may as well not have read it.

Anyway, it’s done now, handed over to Tricia the Editor of Fine Print at Valbec (Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council).. where it will hopefully appear in the Spring 2009 edition (Spring ‘09 Vol 32 No. 3).

..and in spite of the painstaking nature of wading through Academic Guff, some interesting ideas in the book, particularly:

• Allan Martin on “digital literacy & the digital society” (ch7)
• Julie Davies on eBay: “Pay and Display – the digital literacies of online shoppers” (ch10);
• Colin and Michele the editors on Facebook: “Digital Literacy and Participation in Online Social Networking Spaces”, which i’ve written about already on this site (ch11);

Okay, back to work now.

Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel’s (L&K) own chapter in their book “digital literacies” investigates the social networking site Facebook in the light of multiple literacies. Within that environment, literacies have a strong tendency to be “relational” rather than informational.

Hence the “super-poke” is all about connecting with a friend or colleague rather than transmitting any particular information. Membership in “groups” signals identity, but may not involve any actual communication or participation within the group.

Previous studies into social networking include: network theory, signaling theory, human geography theory, social contract theory, and the sociology of groups. Not much on literacies. Except Dan Perkel who examines MySpace usage from a “socio-technical” perspective. For him, “new representational forms” where people re-use many different kinds of media, signal “a deep shift” in the way we interact with each other.

L&K aim to bring their “sociocultural lens” into the investigation ..  as they highlight how people’s identities are constructed as members of Discourses “through the medium of encoded text”. Via boyd & Ellison, the authors note that social networking sites represent shift in way that online communications are organised: “around people not interests”. Online fora of the 80’s & 90’s tended to focus on issues or common topics .. now “the individual is at the center (sic) of their own community”.

So they examine Facebook in this light. Multiple literacies involve:

a) socially recognised ways of “generating, communicating and negotiating meaningful content as members of Discourses through the medium of encoded tetxs.” Drawing on Scribner and Cole (‘81): “literacy as social practice”: ie:

• “socially developed and patterned ways of using technology and knowledge to accomplish tasks”
• pursuing “socially recognised goals” (collecting facebook friends, connecting with people)
• making use of “shared technology and knowledge system” (status updates, applications)

b) meaningful content

• “if there is no text there is no literacy” (Dang who thought up that idea.)
• loose approach to “meaningful content” .. “much weight on the complexity and richness of the relationship between (new) literacies and “ways of being together in the world”"

eg on a blog, meaning is intricately related to our perception of the writer’s identity.

• A text could be understood as expressing the writer’s desire to feel connected .. not as literal information.
• The meaning could be completely relational .. “expressing solidarity or affinity”

c) encoded texts

• meaning: texts freed from context and origin .. “frozen or captured” .. where the text can exist independently of its human creator.
• literacy goes beyond alphabetic symbols .. and can include eg photoshopping an image without text (!!)

d) participation in Discourses
The underlying meaning .. where people are “situated selves”, in socio-cultural context .. of life. Our social, physical, mental behaviours .. as we interact with “non-human elements” like tools, vehicles, buildings, institutions etc

“Meaning-making draws on knowledge of Discourses; that is, on insider perspectives, and meaning-making thus often goes beyond what is “literally” in the sign.” (p257) In this way, facebook represents a giant Discourse, a socio-cultural environment for insiders to connect.

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“Textual life of networks”
They go on to examine 2 people’s social networking practices, and the “textual life of networks”.

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Phew! it wasn’t such a struggle to make sense of the “theorisation” of Facebook, was it!
There is more to this chapter, but i’m exhausted and had to take a break.

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photo credit: John Swords