Eight theses on counter-digital media literacy
A manifesto of cooperation with the inevitable
1. Media literacy is cooperation with the inevitable
1.1. Media have evolved from implements to environments. One can operate with a stone ax – but within the Internet. People can harness an instrumental use but not an environmental force.
1.1.1. Media literacy is no longer a technical manual – it’s a survival guide.
1.2. Our ability to control media as environmental forces do not exceed our ability to control environments. When the Persian King Xerxes ordered to lash the sea for destroying his pontoon bridge, the sea remained indifferent. But at least Xerxes made it into history.
1.3. Speaking of the sea. To describe our relations with the media environment, Marshall McLuhan used a metaphor borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story A Descent into the Maelstrom (1841).
1.3.1. A fishing boat with three brothers was drawn into a mile-wide maelstrom. One brother was swept away by the waves. Another was paralyzed by horror. But the third watched the terrifying spectacle as a manifestation of God’s might and was amazed by its structure.
1.3.2. With awe and reverent curiosity, he observed the whirling walls. Suddenly, he noticed that some debris remained afloat in the descending waters. He abandoned the boat and clung to a barrel. As time passed, the whirlpool subsided, and the sailor was rescued by another boat.
1.3.3. As McLuhan explained, “Sailor saved himself by studying the action of the whirlpool and by co-operating with it… It was this amusement born of his rational detachment as a spectator of his own situation that gave him the thread which led him out of the Labyrinth.”
1.4. Media literacy relies on detached observation and pattern recognition. Cooperation with the inevitable is the only prudent strategy when the forces of media gain the might of a maelstrom.
1.5. Media literacy discerns what we do with media from what media do to us. The former is instrumental use, while the latter is an environmental force. No King Xerxes can change the media maelstrom, but it is still possible to affect the conditions of being drawn into it.
2. Media literacy is Internet hygiene
2.1. The myth of the Internet as a giant dump is only half right. It is a dump in the sense that everybody dumps their stuff there; however, far from everything ends up delivered to and consumed by the end user.
2.2. In reality, three thick layers of filters sift Internet content and efficiently protect us from Internet rubbish: personal settings, the Viral Editor, and relevance algorithms.
2.2.1. Personal settings: by adding a bookmark or a friend, a user claims digital territory and makes it a home place with familiar routes and people. Since these routes and people have been personally picked and tested, they form highly reliable digital surroundings for each of us.
2.2.2. The Viral Editor[ii] is a distributed entity of the Internet, a sort of artificial intelligence whose “processing chips” are people – users.
2.2.2.1. If a user sees something noteworthy, he or she shares it in the hope of eliciting a response, the currency of social capital. If others find it interesting, they share, too, and viral distribution begins.
2.2.2.2. In the process, all participants decide what to select, add, and remove and how to comment, illustrate and enhance. They all micro-edit content on the fly during viral distribution – hence the Viral Editor.
2.2.2.3. The Viral Editor not only handles the selection, framing, and distribution but also serves as an ongoing referendum on significance. Through comments, likes, and reposts, people vote on the importance of content, creating the largest machine of direct democracy in history.
2.2.2.4. The Viral Editor turns the noteworthy for one into the newsworthy for many and kills journalism. It recruits all the expertise, evidence, and wit that people possess, as they all compete for recognition while sharing.
2.2.2.5. For every user, the network of digital friends consists of people with close social demographics and tastes. This ensures the high relevance of their information exchange. The Viral Editor delivers content precisely to whom it may concern.
2.2.2.6. In the blogosphere, the Viral Editor was an algorithm of relevance made up of humans. It was slow and considerate. Social media introduced digital algorithms of relevance and turned the Viral Editor into the Viral Inquisitor.
2.2.3. Algorithms of relevance analyze a user’s past clicks to determine what content a user will be exposed to in the future. A user ends up in the prison of past preferences, but the convenience provided by this prison is enormous: it tailors content to our interests.
2.3. Personal bookmarks, the network of friends acting as the Viral Editor, and algorithms of relevance sift out 99.999…% of Internet noise and deliver content with personal customization unimaginable in any medium of any epoch.
2.4. Everything you need for efficient digital media literacy is already here. The only missing piece is you.
2.5. Media literacy is the hygiene of clicks. The hygiene of clicks means picking links, bookmarks, and digital friends appropriately and with the awareness of consequences.
2.6. Digital media are designed to do an incredible job for you, with one purpose – to suck you in and keep you within. This, not any wrong or malicious content, is the major danger posed by digital media.
3. Media literacy is authorship management
3.1 The Internet emancipated authorship.[iii] In the entire history before the Internet, humankind had approximately 300 million authors – people capable of expressing their thoughts or reactions beyond their physical reach. Now, in just 40 years, we have five billion authors.
3.2. Everybody has gotten the technical capacity of authorship, but not all users have meaningful content to share. On average, 1% of users post, 9% comment, and 90% like, repost, or simply scroll and pause.
3.3. As an emancipated author, people may consistently or sporadically fall into one of the following categories of heavy or lazy authors.
3.3.1. Clicking authors: their non-verbal activity includes liking, reposting, clicking links, or pausing while scrolling. These are still “authorial” and somewhat meaningful choices that define the significance of content and the speed of its distribution.
3.3.2. Interjectional authors: they contribute emotional affirmation through interjections (WOW, LOL, OMG) and their digital surrogates – emojis, gifs, memes, and such. The level of exposure is higher, so they can count on a response (likes) to their activity from others.
3.3.3. Commenting authors: they produce the major portion of user-generated content and contribute an agonistic mentality, thus increasing drama and engagement for all.
3.3.4. Principal authors: they possess sufficient charisma and (sometimes) expertise to start discussions or even discourses.
3.4. The heavy authors (commenting and principal) contribute content. The lazy authors (clicking and interjectional) contribute engagement and keep the machine rolling.
3.5. In different situations and moods, a user can act as either a heavy or lazy author. The higher the activity, the more exposure, the more social capital, and the more hate a user can harvest.
3.6. Media literacy assumes the awareness of the spectrum of authorial opportunities, benefits, and risks. By posting, commenting, reposting, or just liking, you decide the level of exposure for gaining both social capital and hate.
3.6.1. Remember: even pausing while scrolling exposes you to the algorithms – and try not to get too paranoid about it.
4. Media literacy is fake management
4.1. All accounts on social media are fakes. In the digital, we all are legitimate con artists.
4.1.1. Tribal life ensured that everyone’s behavior was exposed to others for better interaction. Writing withdrew an individual from the collective immersion and exposed ideas, not behavior. Digital media have hybridized those two states.
4.1.2. On social media, users exhibit their behavior to others, but it’s no longer the behavior of a real person. This is digital speech-behavior, created by a user for his or her digital persona according to the settings of a social media platform.
4.1.3. In physical reality, our capacities for showing off were quite limited. In writing, creating a character would require outstanding talent. Digital media are directly designed to fabricate our desirable selves in the hope of eliciting a better response.
4.1.4. By allowing our alternative and presumably better digital selves, social media fulfill the highest need in Maslow’s pyramid – self-actualization. The thirst for response that fuels social media is the Hegelian struggle for recognition, digitally refined and amplified.
4.1.5. Everyone does it; some do it skillfully by faking also news and other activities with the same purpose – for better response and subsequent gains. Making others believe in the induced reality is the defining feature of induced reality. Digital reality is entirely induced.
4.2. In physical reality, truths were verified by collisions with solid objects. In digital reality, the only solid objects are others and algorithms. Truth is everything that complies with others and algorithms.
4.3. Digital media literacy is the competence of faking self appropriately and the awareness of others faking themselves. Digital media literacy is well-measured fake tolerance.
4.4. The further development of digital media, with textual generative AI, visual generative AI, and, soon, behavioral generative AI, will only extend these marvellous digital capacities of remodelling the self and its habitat.
4.5. Fake accounts or fake news are not the issue – beware of addiction, polarization, and addiction to polarization.
5. Media literacy is hormone therapy
5.1. Digital consumption is a hormone-driven activity. Smartphones and digital platforms exploit hormonal stimuli developed in humans by evolution.
5.1.1. Curiosity is a beneficial trait because it increases the chances for finding food and shelter or mating. Socialization is a beneficial strategy because it improves interaction and tribal integrity for survival and procreation.
5.1.2. Nature rewards curiosity and socialization with cocktails of dopamine, serotonin, and other pleasure-inducing hormones. Digital media have learned to exploit these survival mechanisms, making users digital hunter-gatherers, united in virtual tribes.
5.2. These hormonal stimuli are tiny; they are barely sensed. Unlike the strong hormonal rewards for sex and eating, which aim for completion and result in satiation, the rewards for curiosity and socialization aim to maintain certain behavioral activity, not to complete it.
5.3. Unlike physical reality, where curiosity and socialization required effort, all it takes in digital reality is scrolling and clicking. Sensing quasi-pleasure but never satiation, we spend more and more time online. In digital media, this is a feature, not a bug.
5.3.1. This is where digital addiction comes from. It’s not even pleasure itself but the yearning to experience that fleeting pleasure again that drives people check their devices in the hope to see a like or to find and share something valuable, potentially leading to a response.
5.4. Media literacy implies the awareness of the hormonal nature of digital consumption. Neither withdrawal nor self-shaming are solutions, but recognition, acceptance, and balancing. Reasonable people can recognize and cope with guilty pleasures; this is simply another one.
5.4.1. The best way of not doing something is doing something else, preferably with a similar degree of excitement. It is hard to resist digital seduction, but there is a chance to employ other activities so that they compete for your time with digital devices.
5.5. “Dopamine culture” is on the rise. The hormonal nature of digital consumption needs to be taken into account when exploring digital business opportunities, assessing digital threats to a healthy lifestyle, or searching for solutions to digital addiction.
6. Media literacy is prompt literacy
6.1. Focusing on answers was the Stone Age of the Internet. Now the platforms want to know questions, and they are getting better at it. Despite humans still mocking algorithms for stupid guesses, the latter can predict our impulsive or hidden desires with remarkable accuracy.
6.2. Either you know what you want from the media environment, or the media environment will make you want what it wants you to want. This is fine as long as you are aware of it: shaping your wants is one of the greatest services of digital media.
6.2.1. The disservice of guessing users’ wants is that the platform algorithms take over users’ lives. In the digital world, platform convenience enslaves.
6.3. Similar to psychoanalysis, the realization of your digital needs, whatever they may be, helps you acquire awareness of them and regain control over them.
6.4. The issue of control over queries has worsened with the arrival of generative AI. Answers already belong to various digital entities – databases, search engines, relevance algorithms, and generative AIs – while holding onto control over queries remains one of the last human prerogatives.
6.5. With the rise of generative AI that handles various human activities, prompt literacy is becoming the fundamental aspect of digital media literacy.
6.5.1. After integrating AI with the Internet of Things and smart homes, prompt literacy will become the key not only to convenience but also to physical safety and survival.
6.5.1.1. Everyone will have to be prompt-proficient with virtual assistants, smart cars, and smart homes so that they do not make one bankrupt, ruin careers and personal lives through digital hallucinations or misinterpretations, or, worse, kill their users.
7. Media literacy is social engineering
7.1. The awareness of media effects results in the mindfulness of media use. When using media as tools and interfaces, one needs to be cognizant of their environmental – cognitive and cultural – effects as well as their services and disservices.
7.2. This knowledge can be used proactively to maximize the services and minimize the disservices of media. More beneficial and less harmful media use can be engineered at the individual level (for oneself) and, with some reservations, even at the collective level (for others).
7.3. Media engineering means cultivating, in various practices and habits, the essential effects of literacy: linearity, sequentiality, scheduling, cataloging, deliberation, long immersive reading, isolated agency, rational detachment, delayed response, delayed gratification, etc.
7.3.1. For example, learn to give yourself (or your children) extra rewards for activities with longer efforts and delayed gratification. Find some other pleasure of fulfillment that can beat, at the hormonal level, the instant but minuscule gratification of digital media use.
7.3.2. Keep cataloguing things, put ideas or events onto mind maps or timelines, use short-, mid-, and long-term planning, postpone your responses (when applicable), use diverse forms of digital and offline socialization.
7.3.3. The ideal tool of media literacy for the digital era was invented long ago. It is the book. Read books. There is simply no better and more natural catalyst for all the effects of literacy we regret losing than long reading.
7.3.3.1. Crucially important: reading must be lengthy enough to induce detachment from immediate reality and immersion in what is being read. Find genres that can keep you reading without distraction for at least an hour (the max length of a TV series episode).
8. Media literacy is time management
8.1. Traditional media literacy programs inherited from classical education the ethos of teaching how to do. This makes sense when you deal with an instrument; however, when media are the environment, media literacy should be anti-environmental – it should teach how not to do.
8.1.1. No one teaches a person how to breathe – it comes naturally from environmental adaptation. But some practices of regaining control over the body teach how not to breathe (such as yoga or tai chi, for example).
8.1.2. The instrumental use of digital media no longer needs to be learned. Media designers have ensured that you will master the necessary skills on the fly. But not using devices when everyone else does requires some spiritual guidance or even enforcement.
8.2. Media literacy is about comprehending, appreciating, and withstanding the environmental power of media.
8.3. Media literacy is the skill and discipline of switching between media and, ultimately, of willingly turning off any medium, no matter how emotionally attractive and sensory pleasing this medium may be.
8.4. In the digital environment, media literacy is not about how to use media; media literacy is about how not to use media.
8.5. Digital media literacy is the discipline of resisting the instant reward for tiny effort and enjoying the delayed gratification for significant effort. 8.6. Digital media literacy is life (time) management.
An excerpt from
The Viral Inquisitor and Other Essays on Postjournalism and Media Ecology.
See also books by Andrey Mir:
[i] The essay is based on the article in Discourse, titled “The seven essential truths of digital media literacy” (2024, August). Revised for book publication.
[ii] The concept of the Viral Editor was developed in Human as media. The emancipation of authorship. (2014).
[iii] I developed the concept of the emancipation of authorship in Human as media. The emancipation of authorship. (2014).
I found you and your work from your own link from your Big Think article. I occassionaly write essays on Medium, all within the last 2 years. My note taking for one of the next ones is on our broken media and informaiton ecosystem. I don't want to attempt a PhD dissertation or book but this is a big topic and your work will be quite useful and helpful. If you have not seen it, I recommend the work and several essays at the Consilience Project - here is one of them. https://consilienceproject.org/the-endgames-of-bad-faith-communication/