The Changing Landscape of Literacies: Big Data and Algorithms
This paper begins with a young British woman – Sophie – and her interpretation of the customized advertising and news she encounters on the social networking and search platforms she accesses via her mobile phone. The paper adopts Sophie as a provocation for identifying and thinking through a range of issues that arise from these new contextual landscapes. To unpack Sophie’s perceptions and experiences, the paper turns to a framing discussion of the impact and reach of data in contemporary culture and the discourses that have grown up around it. The paper then turns to the challenges posed by this new economic and cultural landscape for the ways in which we approach identity, text and being an effective literate citizen-worker.
