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skills are secondary to the more primary skills of analysis, evaluation,
grouping, induction, deduction, synthesis, and abstracting.
Potter and many others working with the traditional concept of
media literacy develop a cognitive view on literacy. However, it is

doubtful whether even this enlarged concept of media literacy as media
knowledge and cognitive (intellectual, analytical) skills to process media
messages is broad enough to capture everything that is required to

successfully use digital media as they require not only knowledge and
cognitive skills but also practical skills of (trans) actions, interactions
and all kinds of applications in work, education and leisure time. We
will come back to this question below.

In 1981 the term computer literacy was published in the
Washington Post (Warschauer, 2003, p. 111). The concept as descried
was very narrow and only indicated basic forms of computer operation,

like turning on a computer, opening a folder and saving a file.
Unfortunately, such narrow definitions of literacy required for computer
use have remained customary since that time. Broader concepts

appeared under the names of information literacy, computer literacy and
digital literacy. The American Library Association (1989) introduced the
concept of information literacy indicating that one has the ability to

recognize when information is needed and to locate, evaluate and use it
effectively. The concept of computer literacy and digital literacy have
been used more often. Paul Gilster (1997: 1) defined digital literacy as
“the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a

wide range of sources when it is presented via computers”. Clearly, in
all these definitions use is put on an even par with media knowledge.
Mark Warschauer (2003, p.111-119) composed a summary of

types of literacy required in working with computers and networks. He
made a list containing computer literacy, information literacy,
multimedia literacy and CMC-literacy. He defined computer literacy as
basic forms of computer and network operation, information literacy as

managing vast amounts of information and multimedia literacy as the
ability to understand and produce multimedia content. He added
Computer-Mediated Communication literacy as the skill to manage

online communications (email, chatting, video-conferencing) in an
effective way keeping to the rules of ‘netiquette’.
A Dutch SCP-research team (Van Dijk, L. et al., 2000) has tried to

extend the traditional literacy of print media with numeracy (handling
numbers, calculating) and informacy (having the specific skills needed