Literacy in its broadest sense is the ability to understand. One’s first thought could be the ability to read and write, but there exist different literacies for different mediums. Literacy is required in understanding how print or digital mediums work. The latter being more complex than the former because it introduces things like videos, images, audio, etc. Unexpectedly perhaps, memes are just as broad what literacy is.
Memes can range from silly videos, to pictures, to even small inside jokes shared between a few people. It differs depending on the time and place when the meme was created and the culture it which it was formed in. There is not solid definition for what a meme could look like. Similarly, there isn’t a solid definition for what digital literacy looks like.
This statement reminded me of how memes are like this too. Certain memes perhaps reference previous events or use symbols and language that requires other forms of literacy. Memes are intertextual, which was also previously explained by Eyman. Understanding how the relationship works between a viewer’s sense of humor and that meme is a form of literacy onto itself.
To define digital rhetoric, you would need to have a solid foundation in what digital literacy is and intertextuality. I’m still learning how these things come together in a cohesive manner. What I so far comprehend is that intertextuality might be the web of roads that sprawl straight to digital rhetoric, and digital literacy is the knowledge in getting there.
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