What are we thinking about when we talk now about media literacy and / for citizenship?

Abstract

Media literacy and citizenship are both contested ideas and ‘problem spaces’. In our research, across Cultural Studies, Education, Media Literacy and Digital Artivism, we have come to understand differently how sociocultural heterogeneity and techno-cultural transformations both enable new intersections of media literacy and citizenship and compel a more, and a differently more, diverse media literacy and a re-negotiation of what we are thinking about when we talk about a more diverse citizenship. This article presents a reflexive account of our research in these fragile traverses between things that made us discover how a more dynamic kind of media literacy can be developed, motivated for positive social change and the intercultural negotiation of a more diverse civic intentionality. However, we have also come to understand that such a shift is epistemological. This realisation raises profound questions for our positions as researchers and writers, which we start to address in this article.