Webmaker/WebLiteracyMap/v2/research

Research from academic journals, blog posts, and elsewhere to inform v2.0 of Mozilla's Web Literacy Map v2.0.

2014

This article focuses on users of the web being able to assess the credibility of information:

"There seems to be a pressing need to develop a “web literacy” approach especially with the emergence of technologies like social software, wikis, blogs, open source systems and what is known as the Web 2.0 movement. Web literacy, a term first coined by Sorapure, Inglesby and Yatchisin (1998), has been defined as “an ability to recognize and assess a wide range of rhetorical situations and an attentiveness conveyed in a source’s non-textual features. Teaching such a literacy means supplementing the evaluative criteria traditionally applied to print sources with new strategies for making sense of diverse kinds of texts presented in hyper textual and multimedia formats” (Sorapure, Inglesby and Yatchisin, 1998)."

Keshavarz, H. (2014). How Credible is Information on the Web:
Reflections on Misinformation and Disinformation. Infopreneurship Journal, 1(2), 1-17.

2013

The 'specific skills' required for the web are discussed in this article, but the authors only focus upon navigation and credibility:

"Web literacy refers to the skills needed for successful web navigation Texas Journal of Literacy Education (November, 2008). Online reading requires specific skills, and these skills are often referred to by educators in K- 12 settings as web literacy skills. Classroom practices often involve research and “the rules of research have changed with society’s move from paper to digital information” (November, 2008, p. 6). Web literacy may fit under the umbrella of New Literacies in that it relates directly to skills needed to locate information accurately and effectively. Web literacy is also reflective of digital literacies, as it is a term used to explain knowledge an individual needs to find information, to examine content, to find out who published a Web site, and to see who is linked to a site (November, 2008)."

Pilgrim, J. & Martinez, E.E. (2013). Defining Literacy in the 21st Century:
A Guide to Terminology and Skills. Texas Journal of Literacy Education, 1(1), 60-69.

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'Web literacy' in this article means effectively navigating the web:

"The two terms that seem most practitioner-friendly are web literacy and digital literacy. Web literacy, as the term implies, describes a user’s Internet navigation skills as well as critical thinking skills required to evaluate online information. This term is not as broad as digital literacy, but the skills provide teachers with concrete ways to help students search for accurate and reliable information in a safe Internet environment (November, 2008). This type of information and support for teachers has enabled educators to develop curriculum for teaching literacy skills."

Pilgrim, J. & Martinez, E.E. (2013). Defining Literacy in the 21st Century:
A Guide to Terminology and Skills. Texas Journal of Literacy Education, 1(1), 60-69.

2012

Rafi Santo (involved in Mozilla's Hive networks) talks of 'hacker literacies' which seems to encapsulate more of what Mozilla means by 'web literacy' - but also goes beyond this:

"I define hacker literacies as empowered participatory practices, grounded in critical mindsets, that aim to resist, reconfigure, and/or reformulate the sociotech- nical digital spaces and tools that mediate social, cultural, and political participation. These “critical mindsets” include perceiving how values are at play in the design of these spaces and tools; understand- ing how those designs affect the behaviors of users of 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 participatory practices” include making transparent for others the effects of sociotechnical designs and the values at play therein, voicing alternative values for these designs, advocating and taking part in alternative designs when spaces and tools are misaligned with one’s values, and employing new media as a means to change those digital spaces and tools—whether on the social or technological level—via social or technological means (Santo, forthcoming)."

Santo, R. (2011). Hacker Literacies: Synthesizing Critical
and Participatory Media Literacy Frameworks. International Journal of Learning and Media, 3(3), 1-5.

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New literacy researchers are fond of claiming that their favoured term subsumes other terms. Here, information literacy is said to encapsulate web literacy:

"Information literacy is about accessing and analyzing information, and Web literacy is a subset of information literacy which involves applying those skills online and being able to recognize obscured intent and pay attention to non-textual features (Burke, 2002; Kuiper, Volman, & Terwel, 2009; Sorapure, Inglesby & Yatchisin, 1998). In other words, Web users must sort through both textual and visual cues to determine the credibility of information online."

Pariera, K. L. (2012). Information Literacy on the Web: How College Students Use Visual
and Textual Cues to Assess Credibility on Health Websites. Communications in Information Literacy, 6(1), 34-48.

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This article, while referencing some critique, cites Prensky's widely-discredited 'digital natives/immigrants' approach'. It seems to argue that intensity of the use of the web can be correlated with 'literacy':

"Apart from social networks, one can discern another element of the transition to this new Web era; that of the increased level of digital literacy among people. One can at this stage distinguish between people who grew up using the Web, the ‘digital natives’(Prensky, 2001) on the one hand, and ‘digital immigrants’ with increased digital literacy, potentially honed by higher involvement in the Web activity, on the other hand. The differences between natives and immigrants are a topic of debate (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008) but one could argue that, overall, there has been an increase in Web literacy levels, based on the high number of users and intensity of use."

Hall, W., & Tiropanis, T. (2012). Web evolution and Web science.
Computer Networks, 56(18), 3859-3865.