Introduction: the need to rethink digital literacy in a postdigital era

The digital revolution has created a world where digital technologies are ubiquitous and operating as an integral part of everyday human life. Today, digital technologies are taken for granted to the extent that they are almost only noticed when they break down and no longer function as expected (Floridi, 2014). Since most contemporary practices ‘entail the digital’, it has been argued that the term ‘digital’ is no longer useful (Orlikowski and Scott, 2016, 88). Instead, it makes sense to say that we find ourselves in a ‘postdigital era’, where humans are inextricably intertwined with digital technologies (Cramer, 2015; Kalpokas, 2020; Pepperell and Punt, 2000; Reeves, 2019). This development has several consequences for the process of navigating the vast sea of information available in digital contexts, that is, for ‘digital literacy’ (see, for example, Bawden, 2001; Lankshear and Knobel, 2008). In the post-digital environment, it becomes important to rethink digital literacy, since the traditional way of understanding digital literacy as a competence of the individual risks hiding relational aspects that may explain the effects of its enactment.

In this chapter, we will argue that as we have entered the post-digital era, there is a need to rethink the concept of ‘digital literacy’ as a sociomaterial practice (Orlikowski, 2007). Rather than understanding digital literacy as a competence or skill possessed by individuals, we will, drawing upon sociomaterial and posthuman theories and empirical examples from existing literature, argue for a need to understand it as a sociomaterial practice enacted by humans and technologies in concert. This means shifting the focus from the ability of humans to use digital technologies, to acknowledging the role of material technologies in the enactment of practices whereby information is constructed and produced. Reframing digital literacy this way also allows for a deeper understanding of the way workplace information literacy is enacted sociomaterially. This increases the potential of understanding and explains not only how workplace information literacy is performed, but with what effects.