Written by: Rafi Santo
Abstract: This article highlights an emerging set of literate media practices that are simultaneously critical and participatory in nature. These practices, themselves natural responses to a shifting new media landscape, have echoes of existing media literacy paradigms, though are not fully encapsulated by them. Through an analysis of public reactions to Facebook privacy policy and feature changes that took place in the Spring of 2010, the article shows how what the author calls hacker literacies are currently being practised in situ. Hacker literacies, which draw their name from the practice of computer programmers that take existing code and reconfigure it according to their own values and for their own purposes, are unique in that they are not only empowered by participatory technologies, but empowered in relation to these technologies as well. Reactions to changes in Facebook during this time period illustrate the ways that the users of new media did not take for granted the design of these new modes of participation nor the intentions and interests of their creators. Their understanding of the malleability of this sociotechnical space and consequent actions resulted in its reformulation, a type of process the author argues will be crucial if there is to be a more fluid and equal distribution of media power in the digital age.
Keywords: critical literacy, empowerment, Facebook, Hacker literacies, media literacy, new literacies, participatory culture, privacy, sociotechnical spaces.