Doug Eyman explains of the term “Digital Literacy” in his study Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric. For context, he expresses the need for it in order for digital rhetoric to be effective. This is what writers use when writing for print literacy and before they use rhetoric. How does this relate to digital literacy? We know that being “literate” means you understand something. In most cases, we hear that term and think, “yeah, we know how to read.” However, it is so much more than that.
It is my understanding that being literate/fluent in a world of digital areas means a multitude of things. You can have the slightest idea of what code means, or you may not, but you know how to use the internet, and that is fine! Understand that whatever you do follows a line of code from your computer. It is the understanding or acknowledgment that you are able to process how digital spaces work that makes you digitally literate.
Now comes the question: “how does this relate to digital rhetoric?” As stated in my previous blog posts, digital rhetoric is what gets us thinking using common tools such as “Ethos,” “Pathos,” “Logos,” and “Kairos.” Eyman states, “Digital literacy is a requirement of digital rhetoric – that is, just as print literacy is necessary for a writer to deploy traditional rhetorical moves, the same is true of digital writing practices,” (Eyman 45). This ties to the initial reason for this post. These two ideas go hand in hand with each other, as they would anywhere else.
In conclusion, digital writing can be understood similarly to the idea of print writing. It is just a matter of how your method for getting your purpose of writing through to the reader.
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