Chapter 7: Knowledge Management

Title: A KM framework for digital literacies

Reference: WORLD SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OUTLOOK 2006 pp. 197 - 208

Abstract/Summary: The field of literacy and development normally assumes that more literacy is always a good thing. We need to question this, along with writers such as Brian Street, Anna Robinson-Pant and others. However, the debate about "literacies" needs to be widened to include the ability to interact with, and originate, texts in all the new literacies, that is, the new digital media and in particular the internet. In order to do so, we need a broader framework of analysis, which adequately accounts for the role that a multitude of literacies has and can have, in people's lives. In this paper traditional "literacy" and media frameworks will be critiqued, using in particular the work of Doronilla, on development in Asia, Rihani, on the application of Complex Adaptive Systems theory to development, Ferguson on "antipolitics" and Titmus on "diswelfare". These will be used to construct a framework of development discourse, with references to several case studies.

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