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Week 2 Situating Popular Culture (Historically): Popular Culture & New Literacy Practices

Production 2: Connect to the Reading: Towards a Theory of Popular Culture for Learning

Response to "Popular Culture in Traditional and New Literacies" by Donna E. Alvermann

New Literacies can be defined as plural ways to understand and communicate ideas (demonstrate literacy) through multimodel platforms and within this new technological era. Whereas the autonomous or traditional form of Literacy included primarily reading and writing to demonstrate literacy throughout the world, Alvermann defines New Literacy as encompassing “…communication in its widest sense (visual, oral, gestural, linguistic, musical, kinesthetic, and digital), social semiotic theory attempts to explain how people recruit various resources (or signs) to represent ideas they wish to communicate through a variety of modes across a range of media” (6).

Alvermann responds to the debate in which he questions whether there is educational worth in students “reading, viewing, listening to, and creating popular culture texts (especially digital texts) …” (9). Many forms of digital texts or social media platforms can have addictive traits, where youth often mindlessly and too quickly scroll though pictures, representations of people and advertisements and which can be viewed as curbing focus or critical analysis in many areas of life. However, there can be educational worth and opportunities for students in which teachers facilitate projects that have students question, express, critically analyze, remix or create pop culture projects that utilize new media and digital texts. For example, Alvermann discusses educational worth in video games when “… the possibility of a literacy refers not only to a game’s semiotic properties but also to its peripheral literacies, such as writing scripts, researching a backstory (the history behind the game’s plot), and walkthroughs (directions for playing the game), or, alternatively, participating in chat rooms, discussion boards, and online communities of amateur Do-It-Yourself (DIY) game developers who “adhere to aesthetic guidelines influenced by but modified from those of the commercial market” (8).


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