Literacies

Abstract

The article is a theoretical inquiry into the category of literacies. It is understood here as common cultural abilities and competences to communicate by the media that allows its users to maintain and build social imaginary and practices. In order to adapt this abstract category to the modern digital revolution, the article offers a distinction between analogue and digital media literacies and competences. Analogue media is linked with mass media and the mass communication era of analogue media such as books, television, radio and press. Digital media is still developing as our societies and cultural frameworks are dealing with new media, Internet, interfaces and new imaginary around them. It is here that theoretical propositions are confronted with digital media practices. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, the concept map and definitions of the categories of communicative competences and literacies are presented. In the second part, the author analyses two interpenetrating media cultures with overlapping technological media: analogue and digital, and the literacies: Gutenberg’s and network-digital coupled with them. In the third part, the article focuses on the selected elements of this interpenetration: a clash between the traditional hardware and the new order of interfaces and software, visual culture and post-media entities, and on the competition between the logic of “reading” and “writing” the media. The discussion in this part is summed up with the analysis of the hybrid format of info-aesthetics.