Changing Nature and Uses of Media Literacy

The more that information and communication technologies become central to modern society, the more it is imperative to identify, and to manage the development of, the skills and abilities required to use them. Within both academic and policy discourses, the concept of media literacy is being extended from its traditional focus on print and audiovisual media to encompass the internet and other new media. Hence, even though the concept of literacy has itself long proved contentious, there is widespread speculation regarding supposedly new forms of literacy - variously termed computer literacy, internet literacy, cyber-literacy, and so forth.

Livingstone, Sonia. London School of Economics (2006). Articles>Communication>Theory

Media, Symbolic Power and the Limits of Bourdieu's Field Theory  

Social theory (even when most concerned with media: ideological analysis, postmodern theory, systems theory) has failed to clarify how media affect its key concepts. The best starting-point is a modified version of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory. While analysing media production as a particular field (or sub-fields) is not new, field theory as normally practised is less comfortable with the idea that media representations impact on all social space simultaneously - precisely the issue in understanding media power. The solution is to draw on Bourdieu's less well known work on symbolic power and the state's prescriptive authority, drawing an analogy between contemporary media's social centrality and Bourdieu's account of the French state's 'meta-capital' across and between all fields. The resulting empirical research agenda is outlined and (in conclusion) a related theoretical issue (how do media affect Bourdieu's notion of habitus?) is anticipated, which the author intends to treat in a separate article.

Couldry, Nick. London School of Economics (2003). Articles>Communication

Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self  

Twitter.com is a web-based communications platform combining Instant Messaging and SMS that enables subscribers to its service to send short ‘status updates’ to other people. Beyond its hybrid platform, Twitter’s unique feature is its overarching question “What are you doing?”, which acts as a ‘guidance note’ on how users should phrase their postings. Although it is a ‘soft restriction’, meaning that other formats and styles are possible, this study investigates the extent to which users of Twitter are responding to the question.

Mischaud, Edward. London School of Economics (2007). Books>Communication>Social Networking>Blogging