All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

13
Educating the Digital Citizen
in the 21st Century
Nicola Marae Martinez, Center for Distance Learning
I. Prologue
A headline caught my eye recently while
browsing a local bookstore. Foreign Affairs
had a leading story titled: “The Political
Power of Social Media: Communications
Technology Will Help Promote Freedom but
it Might Take a While” (Shirky, 2011). One
might have thought that the article referred
to current historic events taking place all
over the Middle East and Africa, but in fact,
the article pre-dates recent uprisings and
covers a wide range of political and social
movements for which social media have
been instrumental. The author points
out that:
Since the rise of the Internet in the
early 1990s, the world’s networked
population has grown from the low
millions to the low billions. Over the
same period, social media have become
a fact of life for civil society worldwide,
involving many actors – regular citizens,
activists, nongovernmental organizations,
telecommunications firms, software
providers, governments … . (p. 28)
Recent political uprisings with citizen
protest in Tunisia, Egypt and other Middle
Eastern countries reflect a new level of mass
mobilization using mobile and social media.
These media are shaping domestic and
foreign political agendas, affect our privacy
and security, and are changing the nature of
individual autonomy and freedom. We have
entered an information era in which the
teaching and learning of these media should
be critically embedded in the educational
program, with careful consideration given
to ethical, privacy and security concerns.
Digital media literacy is a critical component
of civil society in the 21st century.
One of my strong interests as an educator
is to encourage autonomy among adult
learners. Understanding adult agency and
autonomy are strong underlying themes in
my own scholarly work. In the 21st century,
agency and autonomy are intrinsically linked
to our ability to be informed digital citizens.
In my course, Privacy, Security, Freedom:
Social Concerns for the 21st Century, we
cover the implications of living in a world
within digitally mediated surveillance;
technology tracking tools; dataveillance;
and a wide range of threats to privacy,
security and civil liberties. In addition to
researching these topics from philosophical,
policy analysis, legislative and current events
perspectives, students debate the balance
necessary to uphold individual privacy
and civil liberties within an era of ongoing
security risks. The role of the student as
actor and agent, within various degrees
of autonomy, reveals the potential for the
development of both personal and political
autonomy as the course unfolds. Students
comment on their learning:
• “After learning the information I have
learned in this course, I am eager to
make a difference either in how I vote,
what corporations I support, or even to
be more informed about our nation and
our government. I have really grown
to appreciate academic and scholarly
sources. Our media and news stories have
such a slant on them that it’s difficult for
anyone to know the truth.”
• “Our group as a whole was introduced
to some of the most complicated issues
facing citizens and government today.
We explored, analyzed, researched and
even debated acts of legislation, political
and social commentary, not to mention
philosophy. Our eyes were opened to
the various issues facing modern society;
privacy, security, terrorism and cultural
awareness were only some of the topics
we delved into.”
In a world in which our media is dominated
by a very small handful of new sources
that provide the same account of events to
subscribers, assessing alternative sources
of news and information is essential. This
is where social media tools are becoming
indispensable for the everyday citizen as well
Nicola Marae Martinez
as for the educator. Instant access to news
from a number of international sources
provides us with a deeper understanding
of events and a variety of viewpoints. In
addition, the ability to analyze, create
and disseminate content using a wide
range of social and digital media tools is
becoming a necessary literacy for the 21st
century citizen. Emerging research, along
with increased interest from our students,
highlight the importance of educating for
digital media literacy.
II. Why Digital Media Literacy
According to the New Media Consortium
Horizon Report for 2010 and 2011,
“Digital media literacy continues its rise in
importance as a key skill in every discipline
and profession” (p. 3). In fact, digital media
literacy is consistently listed as the top
challenge in this report on emerging trends
and challenges in higher education. The
2010 Horizon Report discusses the difficulty
of encouraging digital media literacy among
faculty as well as students. The primary
difficulty is the problem of educating faculty
so that they feel prepared to share this
learning with students and to allow students
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011