Working Paper No. 1
Changing Literacies: A research platform at Utrecht University
Martina Roepke1
Background
Over the centuries, the advent of new media technologies was part and parcel of a profound
transformation of our culture and society: by the end of the first millennium, the new medium of writing
was known all over Europe; five centuries later, the printing press radically altered the way in which
information circulated; at the beginning of the twentieth century, moving images brought a new
dimension to the media landscape, and today, we are witnessing how digital media effect our
individual forms of communication as well as society as a whole. As part of such larger technological
and cultural transformations new ‘literacies’ emerged and changed the way knowledge was gained
and disseminated, political and social power was established and maintained, and cultural identities
were constructed. Against this background the often-proclaimed ‘new digital literacies’ appear to be
just one paradigmatic shift in a series of ‘emerging literacies’.
The platform Changing Literacies at Utrecht University is designed to stimulate research that places
the recent developments in a broader cultural-historical perspective, thus generating insights into
larger social transformations that are at stake. ‘Literacies’, as the plural indicates, is defined here as a
set of institutionalized cultural practices of media engagement in the broadest sense, which are
themselves shaped by social practices as well as by political, economic, aesthetic and legal
discourses: What does it mean to be ‘literate’ in a given culture at a given time? When do traditional
forms of media-engagement become insufficient and foster the need for ‘new’ literacies? Instead of
defining literacy in a normative sense – as being able to read (well), write (well) or use (new) media
technologies (properly) - we propose to study the discursive constructions in a comparative
perspective in order to investigate under what conditions – political, social, technological, cultural 1
With many thanks to Ann Rigney, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Els Stronks, Eggo Müller, Marco Mostert, Frank Kessler, Joost Raessens and all
the participants of our monthly seminar. Special thanks to Alec Badenoch.
2
explorations of new technologies evolve into literacy practices, which can be learned and taught,
judged and evaluated. Or in other words: we propose to study the making of literacies, past and
present.
Within this perspective, the question is not so much how to provide users with the ‘new’ literacy skills
required by new technologies; the question is rather, how ‘new literacies’ come into being in the first
place, and more specifically how this process is shaped by social, cultural, technological and
economic factors, while at the same time playing an important role in shaping a society in all these
respects. By gaining insights in the process of the making of literacies, the platform ultimately aims at
generating insights from within the humanities that are relevant for the design and critical evaluation of
learning programs and environments for the future as well as guidelines for educational policies.
Two Research Traditions
As the etymology of the word suggests, ‘literacy’ has traditionally been associated with reading and
writing, and hence with the ability to produce and decipher texts (Havellock 1976, Barton 1983,
Clanchy 1993). With respect to electronic mass media, especially television, and more recently to
digital media, the term literacy has been extended from reading and writing to cover the skills and
competencies involved in producing and understanding digital media texts and images. (Aufderheide
1993, Buckingham 2003, Cope & Kalantzis 2000, Duncan 2005, Jenkins et al 2006, Livingstone 2003,
Gilster 1997) In an even broader sense, ‘literacy’ has been defined as a whole set of cultural
competences that are required by the dynamic media environment we live by (New London Group
1996, Media Literacy Unit 2009), and as such has become a key concern of educators and policy
makers worldwide.2 Research carried out within the field of ‘literacy’ is concerned about both the
cognitive as well as social implications of emerging literacies, or, in other words, the ways in which the
spread of literacy skills has influenced the way in which social groups have participated in a given
culture at a given time, or when literacy skills were lacking, got cut off from it. The umbrella term
‘literacy’ then refers, in the words of Sonia Livingstone, to a struggle about the relation between
textuality, competence and power (Livingstone 2003).
Within the broad field of research that could fall under the label ‘research into literacies’ two main
approaches can be distinguished.3 Although these approaches do not represent the entire research
field, and are surely a simplification of the complex scholarly discussions that have been held on this
topic, in what follows they will serve as two axes together marking the field in which the Utrecht
platform aims to position itself.
2
In 2004 the European Commission started a project developing media literacy assessment criteria, an instrument to allow for comparable
analysis of media literacy skills within European Countries. In the Netherlands ‘Mediawijsheid’ was designed a main goal to be achieved by
the Commission of Culture in 20005 (Raad voor Cultuur 2005). For activities that have been developed during the last 5 years the
Netherlands see Mediawijzer.nl and the so-called ‘mediawijsheidkaart’, which gives an overview of activities.
3 ‘Schools’ that are active within this field would be New London Group (D. Buckingham, S. Livingstone et al.), Lancaster School (P. Gee, C.
Lankshear, M. Knobel et al.), Harvard School of Education (H. Gardner et al.) and Annenberg School of Communication (H. Jenkins et al.).
Roepke, M.: Changing Literacies: A Research Platform at Utrecht University. Utrecht University/Cultures &
Identities: Utrecht (Working Paper No. 1), april 2011
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
Technological approach
The technological approach in cultural studies in general and literacy studies in particular refers to the
widespread idea that technology is the driving force behind cultural change and thus the emergence of
new literacies. In a rather strong version, technology is viewed as being somehow autonomous, selfsufficient and independent from the social context in which it is developed and put into practice
(McLuhan 1962). This kind of determinism combines readily with a kind of teleological thinking that
conceptualizes history as progression through (among other things) technological innovation, and that
is driven by the (modernist) belief that technological progress will ultimately lead to an increase in
economic, political and cultural welfare. The development of literacy skills related to ‘new’ technologies
then is pictured as ‘progress’, from a culture of the handwritten word to a print culture with an everincreasing dominance of written means of communication. This latter shift and the way it influenced
culture and society has been described as a ‘bombshell in human history’, a mental and cognitive
‘revolution’ that profoundly changed the way of thinking and understanding the world (Innis 1951,
McLuhan 1962, Havelock 1976, Ong 1982).4 In a parallel move the emergence of new digital media
was recently seen as ‘digital revolution’ implying a radical break with earlier media cultures.
Throughout the last 50 years research from within the humanities has questioned this view, mostly for
its limited perspective on media and technology that sees them as instruments or tools that are
somehow neutral, but also for its inability to map the complexity of historical processes and culture in
general. Media, it has been argued, emerge from the cultural shaping of available technologies
(Williams 1974, Marvin 1988, Winston 1996), a process that is complex, dynamic and not at all linear
or straightforward. (Webster 1995, see also Finnegan 1988, 17). However, more recent research
proposes to study the media engagement as complex interaction between media technologies and
(discursive) practices on the macro and on the micro-level, as well as on the intersection of the two,
paying attention to technological affordances, their specific material shaping and the built-in
knowledge (design).5

Educational Approach
Media educational approaches flourished worldwide in the late seventies as a reaction to the
increasing role of television in the lives of (young) audiences.6 Democratization of education (providing
access and skills), and the goal of increasing critical understanding7 and “promot[ing] autonomy”
(Hobbs 1996, iii) were clearly the engine behind the literacy movement in North America, turning
4
Within literacy research the label of the ‘new’ is powerful, in that it calls for cooperation among the various agents in the field –
educators, policy makers and hardware industries – and simultaneously legitimates investment in a ‘new approach’ along with it ‘new
didactics’, ‘new software’, ‘new tutorials’ – and a whole new ‘literacy industry’ one could add. (Buckingham 2007)
5
For an overview of research in this field conducted at Utrecht University see van den Boomen et al. 2009.
6 Media education in it’s institutionalized form has a short history, starting at the 1930s, flourishing on a national level in various countries
from the late 1960s on and culminating around the turn of the century into global media literacy initiatives addressing the consequences of
digital media technologies for teaching and learning. The so-called media literacy movement was an initiative among educators and
teachers to enhance reading and writing skills on the one hand, while at the same time increasing the ability to critically decode
(commercial) media messages (Lewis & Ihally 1998, Hobbs 1996). While a comprehensive history of media education is still missing, the
number of studies concerning the development of educational media is increasing, see for instance Ito 2009 on the history educational
software, or Masson 2007 on the history of educational film in the Netherlands.
7 Literacy in this sense includes “the process of accessing, critically analyzing media messages and creating messages using media tools.”
(Hobbs 1996, iii) (emphasis MR). Being media literate then meant to be able to analyze the hidden ideologies of media messages and being
aware of their persuasive power (propaganda, commercials).
Roepke, M.: Changing Literacies: A Research Platform at Utrecht University. Utrecht University/Cultures &
Identities: Utrecht (Working Paper No. 1), april 2011
4
literacy into a national and international issue of great significance. With the arrival of new digital
technologies and their rapid but unequal spread around the globe, media literacy projects aimed at
providing equal opportunities for gaining knowledge but also the skills to actively participate in
emerging media environments. However, in her 2009 report, the Media Literacy Unit of the European
Commission states, that the rapid acceptance of digital media among children and teenagers makes it
of the utmost importance to better understand the impact of new media technologies on the literacy
skills of a generation that is growing up in a world of digital media while getting supposedly more and
more detached from traditional print media (Media Literacy Unit 2009). More recently research into
media literacy explores the ‘use’ of digital technologies such as gaming for learning and living.8
Defining the field
While our research is surely informed by the two approaches discussed so far, there are weaknesses
within them that we seek to address. Most research into literacies is shaped by a more or less strongly
determinist thinking in the sense that the arrival of a new technology is seen as a cause for a new
literacy skill to develop. Those approaches then seem to be guided by a set of pre-set oppositions
(new-versus old, empowerment versus protection, knowledge and skills etc.) that seem rather
problematic to us (Kessler 2002). Furthermore, the majority of such studies look into literacy forms and
practices in their established, institutionalized forms, while ignoring how those practices came into
being in the first place. Media educational programs are not very helpful here, because they define
literacy as a set of knowledge and skills that ought to be taught and learned in order to be able to
function as a citizen in society and thus take a normative stance.9 The question of how knowledge,
conventions and rules for media use develop outside institutionalized contexts and learning settings
still does not seem sufficiently answered, either for the present or the past.
The interesting question for us then is not so much how we can increase literacy skills or what the
effects of a certain technology on literacy skills could be, but rather how, under what circumstances,
and why literacy becomes an issue in the first place, or in other words: how ‘literacy’ comes into being.
In the tradition of scholarship from the field of literary studies (Hoggart 1957, Goody 1967, Clanchy
1993), we view the struggle over literacies as a major factor in determining social hierarchies and
participation in culture and society – in the past and today. In addition, recent media-theoretical
scholarship has taught us not to view media as fixed identities or neutral instruments, but rather as
socio-technological constructions. In this view, new technologies help bring literacies into being, while
they themselves are shaped by the literacies that emerge. If literacy means not merely being able to
write or read, but rather mastering a communicative regime, including its built-in power regimes
(Mostert 1995), and if the relation between technologies and literacy practices is one of interaction,
rather than one of cause and effect, then research into the making of ‘literacy’ means studying how the
8
For research activities within the field of games and mobile learning at Utrecht University see
http://gate.gameresearch.nl/index.php?pageID=123 and Raessens 2010.
9 This strand of literacy studies has fostered mostly administrative research, as David Buckingham notes, producing measurable data of
media competences and effects, serving the goals of policy makers as well as the interests of the growing literacy industry (Buckingham
2007, Robins & Webster 1989). While the EU has almost achieved her goal to define assessment criteria against which literacy levels could
be measured and thus compared on an European scale, a comparative study that acknowledges cultural differences in this process is for
reasons of complexity far out of sight. (Media Literacy Unit 2009)
Roepke, M.: Changing Literacies: A Research Platform at Utrecht University. Utrecht University/Cultures &
Identities: Utrecht (Working Paper No. 1), april 2011
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literacy discourse of a given time serves to maintain certain standards, cultural and social hierarchies
within a historical specific socio-technological environment.10

Reconstructing emerging media environments
Histories of communication technologies tend to discuss literacy with respect to established and
institutionalized media and their dominant use, thereby neglecting the many side paths formed by less
‘successful’ media and communication technologies. We need to understand better how literacy
practices emerge in culturally and historically specific media environments at moments when
questions of ‘dominant’ and ‘proper’ use are still open and alternatives are considered. Under what
conditions – political, social, technological, cultural – do explorations of ‘new’ technologies evolve into
literacy practices that are recognized as such, and can thus be learned and taught, judged and
evaluated? (Müller 2009 a) What is the role of creativity and invention in this process and when does
professionalization and institutionalization come into play?

Deconstructing ideologies of ‘the new’ and ‘the old’
Research into literacy is to a large extend dominated by the term ‘new’ while ‘newness’ often refers to
something that is more advanced, sometimes progressive, always implying the idea that ‘new’ is
somehow better.11 In order to gain further insights into those discourses of the new that are so crucial
for bringing literacy under attention, we want to ask questions like: What are the driving engines
behind the discourses on ‘new’ literacies and how do they relate to ideal of learning and
communication at a given time ? (de Vries 2005) On the other hand, what are the forces by which ‘old’
media transform, adapt and thus ‘survive’ the challenges posed by technological developments? And
who benefits from the promotion of one literacy skill over another?

Redefining participation
For the last twenty years educational media literacy initiatives have been motivated by the attempt to
bridge the so-called digital divide (Livingstone 2003, Kellner 2007). However, the media practices
(Youtube, Facebook etc.) of the so-called ‘digital natives’ show that those literacy skills evolve rapidly
outside institutional settings in ways that exceed control (of institutions) and are often seen as
undesirable if not harmful, while they are becoming an important factor for the online economies
(Schäfer 2008). In order to better understand the character of the current transformations we need to
go beyond the dichotomy of protection and empowerment to understand both the diversity of different
spaces/architectures of participation and the different range and depth of participation they allow and
are used for (Müller 2009b). How do literacy practices spread at a given time and allow for diversified
forms of participation?
10
As Lewis & Ihally remind us in a special issues of the Journal of Communication on media literacy, in order to understand, how literacy
skills succeed in or fail to lay the ground for social desirable behavior they have thus to be studied contextually (Lewis & Ihally 1998; see for
an emphasis on socio-contextual factors also Gee 1996 and Lankshear & Knobel 2007). However, we propose to talk about media
environments, rather than ‘contexts’ to indicate a much broader scope of our field of interest. Media environment, in the way we want to
understand it, is a concept that is suited to relate economic, political, social and cultural dimensions that are involved in the making of
literacies.
11 ‘New Literacy’ as a research-label is coined by the so-called Lancaster School evolving around – among others - the work of John Paul
Gee. See on the productivity of the concept of ‘progress’ as a guiding idea within media historiography Kessler 2003.
Roepke, M.: Changing Literacies: A Research Platform at Utrecht University. Utrecht University/Cultures &
Identities: Utrecht (Working Paper No. 1), april 2011
6

Reconceptualizing media engagement
During the last ten years, the early definition of media literacy as “the ability to access, analyze,
evaluate and communicate messages in a variety of forms” (Aufderheide 1993) has been extended to
account for the social aspects of the skills involved. Lankshear & Knobel state that ‘new’ media enable
people to build and participate in literacy practices that “involve different kinds of values, sensibilities,
norms and procedures and so on from those that characterize conventional literacies” (2007, 7). What
those ‘new sensibilities’ could be is brought forward by Henry Jenkins in his White Paper on Media
Literacy, in which he names, among other things, simulation, negotiation and networking as key
competences required by new media environments. (Jenkins et al. 2006) However, while cognitive
and social aspects of media engagement are traditionally part of the media literacy debate, we still do
not know a lot about the role of sensual, emotional and bodily but also material aspects of media
engagement for the emergence of media literate practices (Bleeker 2010, Hakemulder 2008, Lehmann
2009).

Acknowledging the nature of intermediality
Media literacy research tends to label itself according to specific competences and technologies
involved, which has led to an increasing number of literacies: oral, visual, televisual, digital, audio
etc.12 However, the convergent, inter- and transmedial character of our current culture has created a
blurred field of cultural practices. With respect to the goals of the platform we aim to regain
‘convergence’ and ‘intermediality’ as analytic concepts, and thus liberate them from their status as
mere metaphors for current developments in general. This will also help us to avoid any form of media
essentialism, which tends to dehistoricize and decontextualize media technologies. (Verhoeff 2009)
Projects and participants
The Utrecht platform studies the emergence of literacy in a comparative perspective, as a part of
larger communicative regimes changing over time. Coming from a broad variety of disciplines from
within the humanities we feel that the central question – at least from our perspective - is not so much
‘what’ literacy is (a set of skills for instance) or ‘when’ literacy is (when a new technology is put on the
market, for instance). Instead, taking literacy itself as a cultural construction, the question is rather how
literacy comes into being in the first place and thus what it means to be literate in a given culture at a
given time. By focusing on the making of literacies – and the social, economic, political discourses
involved - we want to go beyond the dichotomies (old versus new media; knowledge versus skills,
empowerment versus protection) and avoid the kind of reductionist and normative thinking that is
characteristic for the determinist and the educational approach. We study emerging literacies
comparatively, from oral, handwritten, non-verbal (e.g. visual), print-based and computer-based forms
of communication in relation to questions about social and cultural change, guided by questions
12
Examples would be: Visual literacy (Massaris 1984), Corporeal literacy (Bleeker 2010), Medium literacy (Meyrowitz 1998) , Critical media
literacy (Kellner/Share 2007), Multimedia literacy (Kress 2000), Mulitliteracies (Cope/Klalantzis 2000; Kress 2000), Silicon literacy (Snyder
2002), Participation literacy (Giger 2006), Digital literacy (Carrington & Robinson 2009), Network literacy (Burgess/Green 2009), Ludoliteracies (Raessens 2010, Zagal 2010).
Roepke, M.: Changing Literacies: A Research Platform at Utrecht University. Utrecht University/Cultures &
Identities: Utrecht (Working Paper No. 1), april 2011
7
central to the humanities, such as authorship and textual authority, credibility and trust.13 In doing so,
we hope to open up a discussion about the role of media engagement and knowledge in globalized
societies which is based on a long-term vision rather than short-term solutions.
Research activities are carried out within a great variety of fields, among which:

Medieval literacy (M. Mostert)

Literacy and cultural identities in religious contexts (E. Stronks)

Popularisation and media strategies (1700-1900) (J. Salman)

Emerging literacies: Early cinema and popular visual culture (F. Kessler)

Book-cultures in the digital age (K. Brillenburg)

Media absorption (F. Hakemulder)

Corporeal literacy: Subjectivity and embodied knowledge (M. Bleeker)

Ludo-Literacy: Learning and playing (J. Raessens)

Media-literacy and participation: Institutions and practices (E. Müller)

Visual literacy and material knowledge (A.S. Lehmann)

Literacy of media-spaces: Simulation and augmentation (N. Verhoeff, S. Lammes)

Literacies for new media economies (M. T. Schäfer)

Audio-literacies (I. van Elferen)
Contact
‘Changing Literacies’ is one of four programme lines within Utrecht Universities focus area ‘Cultures
and identities’.
Project-leader

Prof. Ann Rigney
Board-members

Prof. Frank Kessler

Dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann

Prof. Marco Mostert

Prof. Joost Raessens

Dr. Els Stronks

Prof. William Uricchio
Coordinator

Dr. Martina Roepke (m.m.roepke@uu.nl)
For more information:
13
See for instance the emphasis on the way that the “invention” and spread of the handwritten word impacted on the relation between a
writer/speaker and his audience/readers with respect to the problem of ‘trust” and reliability in Mostert 2008.
Roepke, M.: Changing Literacies: A Research Platform at Utrecht University. Utrecht University/Cultures &
Identities: Utrecht (Working Paper No. 1), april 2011
8
http://www.uu.nl/university/research/NL/focusgebieden/culturesandidentities/Pages/default2.aspx
Roepke, M.: Changing Literacies: A Research Platform at Utrecht University. Utrecht University/Cultures &
Identities: Utrecht (Working Paper No. 1), april 2011
9
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