JohnnyColeMedia

Inquiry Pt 2

After researching modern digital literacy and what that means in 2025, the second stage of my inquiry entails taking a step back and examining why digital literacy is relevant and required in the first place. While the internet age continually increases the percentage of time spent looking at online imagery, pattern recognition and the ability to understand images is needed in everyday life. Deciphering art allows people to practice and hone these skills to then apply in their own lives. Co-founder of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) Abigail Housen suggested five baseline skills in reading imagery, those being:

Accoutive – Judgements based on what is known and liked, emotional response

Constructive – Using perception and learned technical systems to weigh value

Classifying – Categorizing and describing the piece in a material tangible way

Interpretive – Identifying underlying meanings and what they symbolize

Recreative – Acknowledging personal history within the context of universal connections¹

These skills allow anyone to find meaning in an image, both from an objective unbiased technical perspective as well as an emotional personal one. These principles apply to the digital world just as much as they do physical imagery. Being able to assess the meaning and message behind a picture is an essential part of visual literacy, and therefore digital literacy. In a personal handbook this guide would consist of the most fundamental skill to modern digital literacy. Most modern discourse takes place online, and the use of images is becoming more common than text. Whether through video sharing platforms like Tiktok or YouTube, or image sharing sites such as Instagram or Snapchat, being able to tangibly understand images is absolutely necessary to be literate online in the modern era. Housen’s isn’t the only theory on Aesthetic Development, but it is the one that aligns most with digital literacy.

1. Visual Thinking Strategies. (2019, December 3). Overview of Aesthetic Development – Visual Thinking Strategies. https://vtshome.org/aesthetic-development/ ↩︎

My final reflection for the semester allows me to look back at the course in the form of a partial recap, save the weeks remaining. The class this week detailing digital ownership was also very interesting. While I’ll dive into deeper detail in Assignment #1, the ideas of copyright preferences and how easy it is to allow an online footprint to exist and copied. Bonnie’s Stewart’s discussion on datafication was also helpful, and coming out there’s a much stronger idea of what information is being gleaned from users. The talk on Cybersecurity was also informative, and opened eyes to avenues of threats/security never even considered.

Looking at the course in the context of a review, there are some elements that functioned more effectively than others. The blog posts are a supportive tool that helps reiterate and ensure understanding of topics studied in class. Not having a set deadline also helps students learn at their own pace rather than rush through material and assignments to achieve a grade. The peer review aspect of these blog posts would also be very helpful, however two members of my group failed to ever return a message in the group chat or show up for attempted scheduled meetings. Ultimately only having one meeting with one other member of the group felt underwhelming, and became difficult to personally try to keep other students I’ve never met responsible/responsive.

Considering different disabilities when curating online content is not something I’d assessed before this week. Accommodating physical or mental disabilities seems second nature in reality, but when transitioning digitally it escapes the mind completely. Particularly creating disability-friendly graphs and other image based materials will be a goal going forward when creating film pitch decks.

Returning from reading break I felt prepared to continue through the semester and finish my degree on a high note. Our EDIC unit touched on annotation and curation, specifically working with some digital tools that aid with annotations like zotero and hypothes.is. The latter functions as a group annotation plug-in, allowing more social interaction and personal feedback and information from others rather than the popular model of anonymity and compilation/conglomeration of sources on the regular web. The ability to rank information gives a different perspective on what’s being presented to you. Rather than an algorithm carefully picking which information to feed you, it feels more crowdsourced and objective instead of a viewpoint being forced upon you.

Zotero is a tool that helps organize and save sources being used in most capacities. The ability to keep track of sources being used when writing a lengthy essay or research paper can be very helpful. Overall it’s not one I will likely use going forward as I haven’t had any issues with citation generators and tracking sources myself. Overall they were both helpful to learn and broaden my understanding of what is available in terms of browser extensions. 

For my first stage of research into my inquiry about the shifting tides of digital literacy I wanted to explore the recent emergence of AI, and analyze whether the movement represents clever marketing or an actual improvement/change in technology. I started by examining the basic landmarks of success: market revenue and general popularity. With a growth rate of 19% and a 2024 global worth of 454.12 billion dollars it’s clear the tech has commercial value. A survey in the same year claims 56% of Americans and 46% of Canadians regularly interact with AI¹². It’s inarguable that the artificial intelligence phenomenon has become widespread. But has it made strides over current gen technology with similar objectives?

Award winning tech journalist Lance Ulanoff wrote an article about a popular sentiment on the internet: the idea that search AI is actively making search engines worse³. Beyond simply wrong results, the theme of the article discusses the idea that the recent AI boom is centered more on visual flair and showing off rather than radical technological advancement. Highlighting an AI overview at the top of a Google search result isn’t to provide more accurate information, it’s to show front and centre the new shiny tool. An MIT technology review article lists some of the known issues with AI tools, including objectifying women’s bodies and dystopian surveillance state “smart cities”⁴. These facts all point to the conclusion that AI is not the mass improvement tool common sentiment believes it to be. With misinformation being commonplace and answers skewed towards specific viewpoints or motivations, being a digital citizen has become much more difficult.

Bibliography

Aiprm. (2024, January 11). AI Statistics 2024. AIPRM.

https://www.aiprm.com/ai-statistics/

Generative AI use surges in workplaces. (2024, November 28). KPMG. 

https://kpmg.com/ca/en/home/media/press-releases/2024/11/gen-ai-surges-in-workplaces-posing-risks-to-employers.html#:~:text=Nearly%20half%20(46%20per%20cent,growth%20rate%20since%20November%202023.

Ulanoff, L. (2024, June 3). I’ve been using Google Search for 25 years and AI overview is the one thing that could ruin it for me. TechRadar.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/search-engines/ive-been-using-google-search-for-25-years-and-ai-overview-is-the-one-thing-that-could-ruin-it-for-me

Heikkilä, M. (2023, March 3). Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. MIT Technology Review.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1068498/why-you-shouldnt-trust-ai-search-engines/

1. Aiprm. (2024, January 11). AI Statistics 2024. AIPRM ↩︎
2. Generative AI use surges in workplaces. (2024, November 28). KPMG.  ↩︎
3. Ulanoff, L. (2024, June 3). I’ve been using Google Search for 25 years and AI overview is the one thing that could ruin it for me. TechRadar. ↩︎
4. Heikkilä, M. (2023, March 3). Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. ↩︎

Week 4 took place over reading break, and I took the first few days to fully remove myself from as many aspects of the internet as possible. While I still needed to check work group chats occasionally I used no social media or similar sites. The cleanse was needed and allowed a small reset from the daily stresses of having a communication device 24/7. Touching base with Valerie in a group session allowed me to reflect on the semester so far and my goals with the course. Becoming more digitally capable and pushing my regular routines of troubleshooting my parents computer and logging into davinci resolve was the reason I signed up for the course. Through the first few weeks of learning new applications I felt as though the boundaries were being pushed, but slowed down over the past month. Deciphering the blog website and the abilities accessible to the user in posts has continued to keep me learning about opened.ca, however continuing to try new things digitally should be a continual goal. 

Also over the break I gave my dog a plate of whipped cream which he loved. Photos attached. Sometimes unplugging can be productive, who knew. 

Week 3 was a less busy week than the few prior, and a nice reset before reading break. Our group missed our meeting due to a member heading home early for the break. On my end a chest infection has been sapping my energy and making it difficult to focus for too long. Although I was still interested in the week’s topics: Artificial intelligence and academic integrity. Relevant to my inquiry into digital literacy in the modern age, AI is one of the biggest culprits blurring the line between reality and fantasy. While the long term effects are still unknown, in the short term the goalposts of proficiency have shifted. The ability to prompt AI can be newly instrumental to careers outside of the digital sector. A generally accepted concept of what’s allowed both legally and morally have not yet been established. This leads to large grey zones: can AI art be used for concept/reference pieces? Brainstorming? Final products? 

Beyond simple image or text generation, botting and artificial intelligence are fundamentally changing the way the internet functions. In 2022 Timothy Shoup of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies was quoted as “in the scenario where GPT-3 ‘gets loose’, the internet would be completely unrecognizable” and predicts such a scenario could see 99%< of internet content being artificially generated.¹ A study by the CBC also found that video hoaxes make up roughly 60 percent of all fact-checked claims that include media.² Fact-checking is an ever present part of modern day social media and the internet at large. Both made-up statements and fake facts delivered with bad intentions are rampant in an ecosystem featuring anonymity. Being able to parse out the truth on the internet may be the most important element of digital literacy today.

1. What if 99% of the Metaverse is made by AI? Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. https://cifs.dk/news/what-if-99-of-the-metaverse-is-made-by-ai ↩︎
2. Pearson, J. (2024, May 28). Google research shows the fast rise of AI-generated misinformation. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/artificial-intelligence-misinformation-google-1.7217275 ↩︎

The second week in terms of reflections gave a stronger feel of what the class is about. We met in our pod for the first time on Friday, although it was just two of us for this one. It was helpful to hear the thought process of someone else in the class and their experience so far. Although we forgot to discuss week 1 blog posts, we did discuss digital literacy and the idea surrounding my inquiry.

The most interesting in class document mentioned touched on the reverse image search tool. It’s something that has existed in my orbit for a number of years, but didn’t understand how to use or how it functioned. Being able to check the source of an image is extremely helpful for fact checking and finding out if an image has been lifted from somewhere else. The ability to authenticate an image has gotten more difficult over time, and this tool is great to combat against that.

Lastly in relation to this class I’ve been working on post production on a self made short film, and the digital applications have been a learning curve. File types between machines and software can be a difficult needle to thread. Going back and forth with our composer we had to convert native ProTools into Wav. into mp3. Here’s a concept piece for the short!