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FROM MEDIA LITERACY TO DIGITAL SKILLS
By Jan van Dijk,
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Alexander van Deursen
Media literacy as a concept was invented for traditional media,
specifically print media and broadcast media. With the arrival of the

computer, the Internet and other digital media the question rises whether
this concept can simply be extended to cover these new media or that
these media have different characteristics and usage opportunities
requiring other types of literacy. This is the core question in this paper.

Media literacy builds on different underlying concepts and there is
no agreement on what media literacy exactly is. There is an
overabundance of related terms, e.g., print literacy, audiovisual literacy,

critical literacy, oral literacy. A fairly common and broad concept of
media literacy is defined by Potter (2004, p. 58-59): “Media literacy is
the set of perspectives from which we expose ourselves to the media and

interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter. We build our
perspectives from knowledge structures. The knowledge structures form
the platforms on which we stand to view the multifaceted phenomenon

of the media: their business, their content, and their effects on
individuals and institutions. (.) The more people use these knowledge
structures in mindful exposures, the more they will be able to use media
exposures to meet their own goals and the more they will be able to

avoid high risks for negative effects.”
This definition is a bit broader than the usual ones, such as those of
Pattison (1982), Aufderheide (1993), Silverblatt (1995), Messaris (1998)

and Meyrowitz (1998), that purely define media literacy in terms of
knowledge of the media. Potter and some others such as Hobbs (1996),
Brown (1998) and Adams & Hamm (2001) add the notion of skill.
Potter (2004, p. 59) lists a number of skills of media production and

seven primary cognitive skills required to attain knowledge: The skills
of production (writing, photography, acting, directing; editing, sound
recording, etc.) can help people become more media literate by adding

more information to their knowledge structures. But the production

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Van Dijk J. From Media Literacy to Digital Skills / Jan van Dijk, Alexander van
Deursen. – Available at : http://www.alexandervandeursen.nl/serendipity5/uploads/
pubs/TradDigital_DeursenDijk.pdf