Hacker Literacies: Synthesizing Critical and Participatory Media Literacy Frameworks

7/30/2019 Hacker Literacies: Synthesizing Critical and Participatory Media Literacy Frameworks

1/5


2/5

MISSIVES

practices that are representative of empowerment inrelation to participatory media . This nascent frameworkstands on the shoulders of these theoretical giants thatalready do a robust job of explaining what it means tobe literate with media. Through only a bit of tinkering(or, I daresay, hacking) with these paradigms, wecan understand and bring attention to something newin our shifting media landscape: the regular reformu-lation of technologies through practices that are bothcritical and participatory.

The #Hashtag as Paradigmatic of CriticalParticipatory Practice

Our best avenue to understanding hacker literaciesand the recent synthesis of critical and participa-tory media practices is to look closely at a practicecentral to how activist movements such as the Arab

Spring and Occupy Wall Street share information withglobal audiences: the use of the hashtag on Twitter(http://www.twitter.com/ ). I focus on the hashtag be-cause it is, in essence, a hack.

In August 2007, open Web advocate ChrisMessina posted a proposal for how people might self-organize on the microblogging platform Twitter usinghashtags, pound signs followed by a short but dis-tinct signature placed at the end of posts on Twitterin order to organize and make posts on a given topicsearchable and visible (Messina 2007). By 2010, theuse of hashtags was a common social practice for mil-

lions of Twitter users from around the world, allowingthem to participate in wide-ranging conversationsabout real-world events and to organize around im-portant issues (Carvin 2009; Gannes 2010).

Messina did not work for Twitter. But because hesaw a tool that was incomplete, he proposed a solu-tion and started to use it. His understanding of boththe technical dimensions of search and the social di-mensions of the needs and norms of Twitter users ledto a user-generated innovation, a hack, that recong-ured a participatory media platform that was increas-ingly playing a central role in public life.

How does this represent a synthesis of media liter-acy frameworks? Viewed from a critical media literacyangle, the Twitter platform itself is the text Messinawas reading. On this reading, he formed a criticalperspective: the text was lacking in certain values,particularly those related to collaboration and grouporganization. He then engaged in a practice that canbe understood from a participatory media literacies

perspective: he blogged about a solution he had tothis problem, eventually reaching enough users andgaining enough inuence in a many-to-many mediaecology for the practice to gain widespread adoption.

Messinas actions and their outcome can largelybe understood via these existing literacy frameworks.Although critical reading of participatory platforms astexts is not traditionally talked about in critical medialiteracy, such reading still engages in critical media lit-eracys primary mode of interaction with media. Forthe most part, one can say that this is, so far, a case of co-presence of critical and participatory media prac-tices. The co-presence of these two sets of practices isan aspect of hacker-literate practices, but co-presenceis not quite synthesis.

Arguably the most important action, however,does represent this synthesis: the solution of the hash-tag itself, the practice that would change the way

Twitter is used. The creation of the hashtag was a formof critical participation with Twitter, a rewriting of the text of the platform based on a critical reading andvia a participatory reaction. Underlying this solutionis an understanding that is central to what sets hackerliteracies apart from its theoretical afliates: partici-patory media, and the ecologies in and around them,are malleable. If Messina had not assumed he couldchange Twitter, he would never have come up withhis innovation.

Dening Hacker Literacies

I dene hacker literacies as empowered participatorypractices, grounded in critical mindsets, that aim toresist, recongure, and/or reformulate the sociotech-nical digital spaces and tools that mediate social,cultural, and political participation. These criticalmindsets include perceiving how values are at playin the design of these spaces and tools; understand-ing how those designs affect the behaviors of usersof those spaces and tools; and developing empow-ered outlooks, ones that assume change is possible,in relation to those designs and rooted in an under-

standing of their malleability. Empowered participa-tory practices include making transparent for othersthe effects of sociotechnical designs and the valuesat play therein, voicing alternative values for thesedesigns, advocating and taking part in alternativedesigns when spaces and tools are misaligned withones values, and employing new media as a means tochange those digital spaces and toolswhether on the

2 International Journal of Learning and Media / Volume 3 / Number 3
http://www.twitter.com/http://www.twitter.com/


3/5

MISSIVES

social or technological levelvia social or technologi-cal means (Santo, forthcoming).

This abstraction of the principles at play in thestory of how hashtags came to be is also applicableto many of the other ways the participatory medialandscape is increasingly being reshaped.

Further Contexts of Hacker-Literate Practice

In the ways they use the hashtag, modern activistmovements such as the Arab Spring and Occupy WallStreet, which was originally branded #OccupyWall-Street (Flock 2011), were beneciaries of hacker-literate practices. At the same time, these movementsalso participated in these practices in ways that showwhat their diversity can look like in situ. Followingthe Arab Spring, during which Egypts Hosni Mubarakshut down Internet access in the country, activists

the world over realized that the Web as currently for-mulated is increasingly vulnerable to disruption andsurveillance by repressive regimes. Many activistsbegan projects that would function to encrypt com-munications or even create alternate Internets thatcould be accessed in the case of shutdowns (Young2011).

Likewise, many in the Occupy Wall Street move-ment have expressed understandings that existingonline tools and spaces might need to be recong-ured or replaced to meet their needs. Ad hoc hack-a-thons using the moniker Occupy the Web sprang

up around the country to work on specic technol-ogy requests that emerged from the larger Occupymovement (Kelly 2011). People made proposals forprojects that supported the values of the broadermovement but could not be found in existing par-ticipatory toolsfor example, police brutality trackers,online platforms that supported consensus building,and news aggregators that compiled updates fromthe disparate protest locations. Computer program-mers in cities including San Francisco, New York, andWashington, DC, then came together for short stintsin which they worked to realize the projects that were

in greatest demand.In contrast to the hashtag, which aimed to change

the way a specic participatory platform operated,these projects, like those to create alternate Internets,involve people trying to change the participatorymedia ecology to better suit the needs and values of aparticular group. People saw that their needs were notbeing met by existing tools, and rather than changing

those tools they sought to build alternatives. Messina,after reading the text of Twitter, chose to rewrite it.But the text that was read in the case of Occupy theWeb was the larger participatory media ecology, andthis ad hoc group then rewrote the constitution of that ecology by adding new texts.

In the case of Occupy the Web, the people doingthe reading and those doing the rewriting were notthe same, which points to the often distributed natureof hacker literacies. Some people identied the gapsand insufciencies with current tools, while othersbuilt alternatives. Whereas Messina was one personencompassing the spectrum of reading and rewritinghacker-literate practices, such practices, because of the communal nature of sociotechnical spaces, are farmore likely to be distributed, as in the case of OccupyWall Street.

Another instance in which this kind of distributed

hacker-literate practice occurred was in user responsesto Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/ ), which hasproven to be one of the most controversial online so-cial spaces because of its many user privacy snafus. Ina study of reactions to a series of specic feature andpolicy changes that affected user privacy in the springof 2010, I found that Facebook users took on roles allalong the spectrum of hacker literacies (Santo [n.d.]).

Many reactions were on the critical, reading, sideof the hacker literacies spectrum, oriented towardpointing out the divergence between the values of thespace and its users, as well as the negative effects the

designs had for Facebook users. Some focused on voic-ing what users saw as the values Facebook stood forand the values these changes implied. One user madea claim that by making more information publiclyavailable by default, the company was debasing thelanguage of privacy. Another stated that Facebooksbusiness model is based on exploitation of personalinformation. Others pointed to specic negative ef-fects of the privacy changes. One user pointed out anincident in which a photograph made available by thechanges was used by a third party in a way the orig-inal poster had never intended, and others pointed

out how the simple act of adding somebody as a friendcould now compromise that friends privacy (Santo[n.d.]).

Other reactions fell on the participatory, writing,side of the hacker literacies spectrum, voicing alter-native designs that better aligned with user valuesand advocating specic actions based on a theory of how Facebook might be changed. Some argued that

Santo / Hacker Literacies 3
http://www.facebook.com/http://www.facebook.com/http://www.facebook.com/


4/5

MISSIVES

Facebook users should not have to be so vigilantabout their privacy when using the service, that itshould be designed to protect privacy by default.These users, in voicing alternative design princi-ples, understood the nature of Facebook as a de-signed and therefore malleable space. Likewise,users that advocated for various kinds of advocacyand actionfor example, collectively changingprole information such as birthdays to throwoff [Facebooks] marketing dataalso understoodthat the social networking site could be subject topressures that would lead it to change its policiesand features (Santo [n.d.]).

Facebook eventually responded to the mass out-cry by introducing a new, simplied set of privacycontrols (Zuckerberg 2010), and in a settlement in late2011 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, in additionto requiring that many privacy changes be opt-in (as

opposed to imposing sharing on users by default), or-dered that Facebook be subject to a number of checksaround privacy issues, including regular privacy auditsuntil 2031 (Sengupta 2011). The ecology that emergedas a result of this case, in terms of both users as wellas other stakeholders such as government, points to abroader culture characterized by both criticality andparticipation in relation to participatory media.

Concluding Thoughts

We can look at participatory democratic movements

such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street ascontexts wherein hacker literacies are currently prac-ticed, but we can also look to participatory democracyfor an important metaphor that sheds light on thetheoretical contours of this new literacy space. Muchof democratic participation is oriented around enact-ment of new policies that better serve the needs of citizens. The structures of government, in these cases,are seen as mechanisms through which people can beempowered. But every so often citizens realize, oftenafter unsuccessfully attempting to get their needs metthrough currently available mechanisms, that some-thing is wrong with the mechanisms themselvesthatthe modes of participation must be reformulated. Themovement to enact campaign nance reform, for ex-ample, is a manifestation of these realizations, an ex-pression of understandings that other policies will notcome to be unless a crucial mechanism of governmentis changed. More broadly, the Arab Spring and Occupy

Wall Street movements share this sentiment in theirown distinct and varied ways, each taking issue withthe very structure of government.

Hacker literacies are the manifestation of such asentiment, but instead of focusing on mechanismsof government they focus on the mechanisms of theparticipatory media that currently shape the ways weengage in social, cultural, and political communica-tion. They are civic in that they are based in deeplyheld values about what our world should look like,though they are not limited to what has traditionallybeen considered the civic sphere. That artifacts havepolitics (Winner 1986) and that specic media arethemselves messages (McLuhan 1964) are notionsthat have long been established, and in a worldthat is increasingly mediated by technology, askingquestions about what values are at play in the designsof media becomes a central concern. More important

is that these designs are not taken for granted andassumed to be staticnot by us and certainly not byfuture generations.

In the area of education I see a great deal of promise in pedagogical approaches that position kidsas makers, tinkerers, and, most important, remixers of technology. Looking to constructionist learning prin-ciples, in particular, can form the basis of a pedagogyof critical participation with technology. More than30 years ago, Seymour Papert opened his foundationalbook Mindstorms with these words:

In most contemporary educational situationswhere children come into contact with com-puters the computer is used to put the childthrough the paces, to provide feedback and todispense information. The computer is pro-gramming the child. In the LOGO environ-ment the relationship is reversed: The child,even at preschool ages, is in control: The childprograms the computer. (Papert 1980, p. 19)

I believe communities interested in the intersec-tion of digital media and learning will do well toheed these words and create innovations that fol-low the ideals at play in the LOGO programmingenvironment: the child must be programmingthe computer rather than the other way around.Thankfully, many are currently doing so in waysthat are a boon for the development of hackerliteracies in young people. More and more toolsand learning environmentsincluding, among

4 International Journal of Learning and Media / Volume 3 / Number 3


5/5

MISSIVES

many others, Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/ ;Resnick et al. 2009), Gamestar Mechanic(http://gamestarmechanic.com/ ; Salen 2007), andMozillas Hackasaurus (http://hackasaurus.org/ )arebeing developed that aim to position youth as design-ers of technology. Projects like these have strong po-tential to develop the fundamental building blocks of hacker literacies and put young people in the role of creators and makers of their own technosocial world.As a society, we must be prepared to provide not justguidance and tools but, most important, must trustthat young people have the potential to work withand appropriate these tools to become creators of theirown future.

References

Buckingham, D. 2003. Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Carvin, A. 2009. In Iran, the revolution will be tagged.NPR.org. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId = 105679927 (accessed November 22,2010).

Flock, E. 2011. Occupy Wall Street: An interview withKalle Lasn, the man behind it all. WashingtonPost.com .http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.html(accessed October 23, 2011).

Gannes, L. 2010. The short and illustrious history of Twitter#hashtags. April 30. GigaOM . http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/ (accessed November 22, 2010).

Hobbs, R. 2007. Reading the media: Media literacy in highschool English . New York: Teachers College Press.

Jenkins, H., K. Clinton, R. Purushotma, A. Robison, andM. Weigel. 2006. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century .Chicago: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foun-dation. http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/ JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF (accessed January 22,2012).

Kelly, M. 2011. Occupy the Web: Hackers join world-wide protest. DevBeat [blog]. http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/17/hackathon-occupy-wall-street/ (accessedOctober 26, 2011).

Lankshear, C., and M. Knobel. 2006. New literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learning . Buckingham, UK: OpenUniversity Press.

McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding media: The extensions of man . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Messina, C. 2007. Groups for Twitter; or a proposalfor Twitter tag channels. FactoryCity [blog]. http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/ (accessedNovember 22, 2010).

National Association for Media Literacy Education(NAMLE). n.d. Core principles of media literacy edu-cation in the United States . Cherry Hill, NJ: NAMLE.http://namle.net/publications/core-principles/(accessed October 12, 2010).

Papert, S. 1980. Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerfulideas . New York: Basic Books.

Resnick, M., J. Maloney, A. Monroy-Hern andez et al. 2009.Scratch: Programming for all. Communications of the ACM 52 (11):6067. doi :10.1145/1592761.1592779 .

Salen, K. 2007. Gaming literacies: A game design study inaction. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hyper-media 16 (3):30122. http://editlib.org/p/24374(accessed January 22, 2012).

Santo, R. Forthcoming. Hacker literacies: User-generatedresistance and reconguration of networked publics. InCritical digital literacies as social praxis: Intersections and challenges , ed. J. Avila and J. Zacher Pandya. New York:Peter Lang.

Santo, R. n.d. Toward hacker literacies: What Facebooksprivacy snafus can teach us about empowered digi-tal practices. Unpublished manuscript, last modiedAugust 31, 2011.

Sengupta, S. 2011. F.T.C. settles privacy issue at Facebook.New York Times , November 29. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.html (accessed January 29,2012).

Winner, L. 1986. Do artifacts have politics? In The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology ,1939. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Young, R. 2011. Fear of repression spurs scholars and ac-tivists to build alternate Internets. Chronicle of Higher Education , September 18. http://chronicle.com/article/Fear-of-Repression-Spurs/129049 (accessedOctober 28, 2011).

Zuckerberg, M. 2010. Making controls simple. Facebook Blog .http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=391922327130(accessed May 3, 2011).

Santo / Hacker Literacies 5
http://scratch.mit.edu/http://scratch.mit.edu/http://gamestarmechanic.com/http://gamestarmechanic.com/http://hackasaurus.org/http://hackasaurus.org/http://hackasaurus.org/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105679927http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105679927http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105679927http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105679927http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.htmlhttp://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDFhttp://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDFhttp://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDFhttp://venturebeat.com/2011/10/17/hackathon-occupy-wall-street/http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/17/hackathon-occupy-wall-street/http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/http://namle.net/publications/core-principles/http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1592761.1592779http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1592761.1592779http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1592761.1592779http://editlib.org/p/24374http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.htmlhttp://chronicle.com/article/Fear-of-Repression-Spurs/129049http://chronicle.com/article/Fear-of-Repression-Spurs/129049http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php'77%20post=391922327130http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php'77%20post=391922327130http://chronicle.com/article/Fear-of-Repression-Spurs/129049http://chronicle.com/article/Fear-of-Repression-Spurs/129049http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.htmlhttp://editlib.org/p/24374http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1592761.1592779http://namle.net/publications/core-principles/http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/17/hackathon-occupy-wall-street/http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/17/hackathon-occupy-wall-street/http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDFhttp://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDFhttp://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDFhttp://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.htmlhttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105679927http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105679927http://hackasaurus.org/http://gamestarmechanic.com/http://scratch.mit.edu/

Documents

Hacker Literacies: Synthesizing Critical and Participatory Media Literacy Frameworks