Revisiting Critical Literacy in the Digital Age

In an age of environmental crisis, financial instability, widespread migration, and political extremism, the case for critical literacy is pressing. Navigating criticality in the digital age, however, is challenging, not least because digital media, digital devices, and digital architectures are implicated in broader social, cultural, commercial, and political activity. Critical literacy in this context needs to do more than focus on the significance of texts within networks of humans. The authors developed a model designed to support a relational approach to critical literacy, drawing on a sociomaterial perspective to consider how broader social-material networks help generate meanings that may amplify, undermine, or contradict the activities of individuals and groups. The authors end with questions that provide a starting point for broadening the scope of critical literacy in education to reflect on relationships among people, texts, and materials across time and spaces.