Digitally Literate Person
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A digitally literate person is a literate person who knows how to access digital spaces in a safe and effective manner.

Prof. Hiller Spires (Spires and Bartlett, 2012) has outlined three pillars of digital literacy: (a) finding and using digital content, (b) content creation, and (c) sharing digital content.

  • Finding and Using Digital Content: The ability to quickly find the information you need on the Internet and the skills to use it to your advantage is the foundation of digital literacy. At the same time, all learners must be introduced to the basics of maintaining cyber hygiene for their own safety. The user must be able to scan for relevant information and safely access links, images, and other elements.
  • Content Creation: This pillar includes the ability to express oneself clearly and respectfully in the online space, from awareness of basic email etiquette to understanding how text is read by recipients on different devices and platforms.
  • Sharing Digital Content: The consequences of sharing too much information online can be serious. Some hackers and scammers go to great lengths to defraud and scam people online, and criminals also use the Internet to manipulate and trick people for their nefarious purposes. The digitally literate person is aware of the risks of social media and what kind of information they should not share online. They also understand how their online behavior can affect others (e.g., cyberbullying).

The digitally literate person has to take into consideration the four drivers of The rise of online untruths, primarily when finding and using digital content, but also when creating and sharing content:

Source : Spires and Bartlett (2012) Digital literacies and learning: Designing a path forward. Friday Institute White Paper Series. NC State University. Cited in Hiller A. Spires, Casey Medlock Paul, and Shea N. Kerkhoff (2018) Digital Literacy for the 21st Century. In Mehdi Khosrow-Pour (ed) Encyclopedia of information science and technology, Fourth edition. IGI Global. url.