Design
In the reading Applen redefines literacy as design. Literacy in new media would typically involve decoding written symbols while shaping experiences through multimodality. As a reader we also know that digital writers acts as a rhetorician, designer, and coder in how they orchestrate meaning flowing across screens and networks. By redefining literacy as design, Applen is impacting the frames of the work in itself. How? Because he is pointing to design as being an active process of creation rather than being passive. Writers then must learn to compose in a way that shows they consider technology a tool that structures meaning. This would include attention to color and how it conveys tone, how their page layout influences their credibility, what attention hyperlinks draw, and other features.
Collaboration
Another feature Applen draws attention to how collaboration is a defining feature of new media. I’ve mentioned before that printed material does not offer the same opportunities that digital writing does. With printed literacy, authors benefit from solitary authorship, while with digital writing because spaces are shared, authorship can be distributed and co-constructed. This information should in turn teach us that the credibility of information is dependent on who wrote it but also on how communities sustain that information. As readers and writers, when seeking information we need the ability to evaluate the sources we find.
Critical Awareness
Finally, Applen talks about cultivating critical awareness. We need to decipher meanings technologies mediate. Digital platforms are embedded with assumptions on how we communicate and persuade. When we are able to recognize these actions, we also begin to understand for ourselves that no medium is neutral.
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