Roffi, Alice

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University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints November 2021 Book Review - Stocchetti, M. (Ed.). (2020). The Digital Age And Its Discontents: Critical Reflections in Education. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press Alice Roffi University of Florence, alice.roffi@unifi.it Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jmle-preprints  Part of the Educational Technology Commons Recommended Citation Roffi, A. (2021). Book Review - Stocchetti, M. (Ed.). (2020). The Digital Age And Its Discontents: Critical Reflections in Education. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jmle-preprints/21 This Book/Media Review is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@etal.uri.edu.   Book Review - Stocchetti, M. (Ed.). (2020). The digital age and its discontents: Critical reflections in education. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press  Abstract Digital technologies are impacting every aspect of our lives, as also demonstrated by the current COVID-19 pandemic that forced us behind a screen for work, relational and also educational activities, thus increasing their consumption. Besides the opportunities offered by these technologies, several drawbacks are associated with their use related either to the consequence of the interaction with devices (in particular with the interactive screen use) and the (hidden) ideological content of media. In this context, the book “The digital age and its discontents: Critical reflections in education” offers an insight about the role of formal education in counteracting the downsides of digitalization and its ideology, proposing  intellectual tools for educators and researchers. This book provides a deep reflection on the digital technologies innovation and the discontent it created from different (intertwining) perspectives. The role of education is to address the issues raised by the integration of new emerging technologies, through a critical approach towards digital literacy and education.  Keywords Digital citizenship, Digital literacy, Media Education, Digital Capitalism  Digital technologies are impacting every aspect of our lives, as also demonstrated by the current COVID-19 pandemic that forced us behind a screen for work, relational and also educational activities (Carretero et al., 2021), thus increasing their consumption. Besides the opportunities offered by these technologies, several drawbacks are associated with their use related either to the consequence of the interaction with devices, in particular with the interactive screen use (Melo et al., 2020) and the hidden ideological content of media. In this context, the book “The digital age and its discontents: Critical reflections in education” edited by Matteo Stocchetti offers an insight about the role of formal education in counteracting the downsides of digitalization and its ideology, offering intellectual tools (as concepts, arguments, literature,...) for educators and researchers. The Chapter 1 - Introduction, written by Matteo Stocchetti, starts with a deep analysis of the issues raised by technological development and the influence of digital capitalism on the relationship between social changes, increasing digitization and education. Moving from the origins of this digital discontent, which coincides with the beginning of ICT developments in the ‘70s, the author retraces the capitalist   appropriation of technological development through a literature overview, providing the theoretical grounds for the subsequent chapters.  Keeping on the same themes, Marko Ampuja in Chapter 2 - The blind spots of digital innovation fetishism analyses the destructive effects of above mentioned appropriation, underlining the fetishist character of digital innovation (not conceived for democratic purposes), and the widespread incapacity to observe the negative social implications. To avoid these unwanted effects, Universities' workers and students need to be aware of the direction of digital innovation and the systems of production and consumption that surround them. In Chapter 3 - The screen as an instrument of freedom and unfreedom, Amy Wendling focuses on the role of the screen in education, identifying the classroom as a privileged place where to acquire a critical perspective on its use. Thus, the practical recommendation  is to “invite the screen in the classroom”, encouraging students’ discussion around its opportunities and  limitations. Furthermore, since students’ attention is a limited resource against the cognitive effort required by multitasking as digital devices allow you, Amy Wendling suggests that education and training should prepare students and teachers on the risks of suspended attention, increasing their awareness and ability to manage this cognitive challenge. In this regard, some scholars have recently underlined the importance of integrating digital technologies in education while “balancing the educational opportunities with the students well-being” (Melo et al., 2020, p. 2), thus confirming the relevance of a critical approach to media and technologies in our media-saturated societies. The Chapter 4 - Facebook’s response to its democratic discontents: Quality initiatives, ideology and education’s role, edited by Lincoln Dahlberg, revolves around the theme of the quality of public sphere communication in social media platforms, examining the most popular one, Facebook. If democracy should be ensured in the world of digital social media, according to the author, critical media education is crucial to make students aware of the political economy and ideological ideas behind the platforms by fostering critical thinking  and fostering public debates around social media’s role. This claim is linked to an issue widely discussed in the literature, namely the integration of social media literacy into the educational curriculum. As shown in the literature analysis of Manca and colleagues (2021), a “glocal” approach to social media literacy that combines local skills and global meta-awareness is increasingly necessary. Therefore, social media literacy “may entail cognitive skills, collaborative practices, and participatory approaches that are influenced by local context and commercial imperatives” (Manca et al., 2021, p.13).   The Chapter 5 - The quantified self and the digital making of the subject by Laurence Barry and 6 - Can algorithmic knowledge about the self be critical? by Eran Fisher, tackle the issue of the impact of digitization processes on the self, particularly referring to the role of big data generated for each individual and the algorithm based on them. On one hand, Laurence Barry provides arguments against the ideology and goals of the Quantified Self Movement, and the trust in algorithms for building the knowledge on self. On the other hand, Eran Fisher states that  the ‘algorithmic self ’ is a ‘post-political identity’ and, as such, a challenge to the idea that the efforts to seek emancipation can be based on the centrality of the individual as a political subject. Remaining on the issue of the impact of digital big data on the self, Richard Hall in Chapter 7 - Platform discontent against the university focuses on the education context particularly referring to the digitalization of universities. The discontent is linked to the uncritical adoption of learning platforms, and the specific algorithm and data extraction for commercial purposes that infrastructuring entails. Thus, a question emerges from Hall’s analysis regarding the possibility to approach alternative solutions with learning platforms being designed based on justice and equality.  Datafication and the related implications are the main theme of these chapters, entailing  new challenges for media education and, more generally, for the educational context (Van Audenhove, Van den Broeck, & Mariën 2020). In this respect, the “critical data education” is seen as the way to raise students aware about the role of digital data (Knaus 2020), also in terms of “data economy” and “surveillance capitalism” (Pangrazio & Selwyn, 2020) and to support social justice against datafication (Raffaghelli, 2020).  The Chapter 8 - The technological imaginary in education: Myth and enlightenment in ‘personalized learning’ by Norm Friesen moves to a pedagogical dimension with an analysis of the technological development in education, highlighting how the introduction of computers in education have been based on the ideas of educational dialogue and personalized learning which, according to him, are actually just a myth, “used not to explain a belief or natural phenomenon, but to justify efforts in the ongoing reform and development in education” (p. 155). In Chapter 9 - Technological unemployment and its educational discontents Petar Jandrić and Sarah Hayes identify and describe the category of the educational discontent with technology unemployment: discontent with neoliberalization (“the trend of diminishing rights of academic workers and its consequences” p. 175), discontent with automation, discontent with dehumanization, discontent with acceleration (“concerned with ways in which we use   technologies, rather than technologies per se” p. 176), discontent with content of work, and discontent with educationalization. This analysis aims at stimulating reflections to develop “new forms of resistance” and for further exploration of the relationship between education and technology unemployment, considering also the dialectical nature inside the educational system, that while preparing students for the marketplace, it creates in turn a new kind of market place.  The critical insights provided by Chapters 8 and 9 - educational dialogue, personalized learning and the educational discontent - are further discussed in Chapter 10 - Pedagogic Fixation, where Christo Sims highlights how these myths can influence decision makers in education, up to amplifying the capitalist ideology. In this context, the shortcomings of practice inspired by capitalist ideology have been ignored and the critical attempts to counter the detrimental effects have been hindered. The problem of commodified knowledge and the role of MOOCs has been addressed in Chapter 11 - Bildung in a digital world: The case of MOOCs, Danielle Shanley, Tsjalling Swierstra and Sally Wyatt discussed the origin of the fear related to the commodified and standardized knowledge offered by MOOCs. These reasons are not new and thus not intrinsically related to the MOOC itself, but rather associated with the use of technology. Despite these drawbacks, authors offered a balanced perspective for the use of MOOCs underlining their potential for supporting Bildung and their versatility to “take different forms and be used to support different pedagogical models” (p. 227). In conclusion, after having discussed the enthusiast and skeptic arguments on MOOCs’ use in higher education, authors recommend “to adopt a more nuanced understanding of digital or virtual spaces for teaching and learning” (p. 228) that can take into account the potential for fruitful engagement and intervention, considering the opportunities that online education can offer.  Today, the problem of online education, and the critical approach it requires, is more relevant than ever considering that, due to the pandemic, all school levels, including higher education, moved online. As a consequence, the need for improving teachers’ and students' digital competences increased as well as the importance of the pedagogical competences to innovate teaching practices with ICTs (Ranieri, Gaggioli & Kaschny Borges, 2020), balancing risks and opportunities (Melo et al., 2020). The last Chapter - Afterwords. Critical philosophy of technological convergence: Education and the nano-bio-info-cogno paradigm, Michael A. Peters presents an intellectual approach (or paradigm) to technological development and its discontent, pointing out that nanotechnology,   biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science could set the conditions for new perspectives in science and technology, posing at the same time several challenges.  This book provides a deep reflection, from different (intertwining) perspectives, on the digital technologies innovation and the discontent they generated. The role of education is to address the issues raised by the integration of new emerging technologies, through a critical approach towards digital literacy and education (Ranieri, 2019).  References Carretero Gomez, S., Napierala, J., Bessios, A., Mägi, E., Pugacewicz, A., Ranieri, M., Triquet, K., Lombaerts, K., Robledo Bottcher, N., Montanari, M. and Gonzalez Vazquez, I. (2021). What did we learn from schooling practices during the COVID-19 lockdown. EUR 30559 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2021, ISBN 978-92-76-28418-5, doi:10.2760/135208, JRC123654.  Knaus, T. (2020). Technology criticism and data literacy: The case for an augmented understanding of media literacy. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 12(3), 6-16. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2020-12-3-2.  Manca, S., Bocconi, S., & Gleason, B. (2021). “Think globally, act locally”: A glocal approach to the development of social media literacy. Computers & Education, 160, 104025.  Melo, C., Madariaga, L., Nussbaum, M., Heller, R., Bennett, S., Tsai, C. C., van Braak, J. (2020). Editorial: Educational technology and addictions. Computers & Education 145, 103730.  Pangrazio, L. and Selwyn, N. (2020): Towards a school-based ‘critical data education’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2020.1747527  Raffaghelli, J. E. (2020) Is Data Literacy a Catalyst of Social Justice? A Response from Nine Data Literacy Initiatives in Higher Education. Educ. Sci. 2020, 10, 233; doi:10.3390/educsci10090233    Ranieri, M. (2019). Literacy, Technology, and Media. In: Renee Hobbs and Paul Mihailidis (Editors-in-Chief), Gianna Cappello, Maria Ranieri, and Benjamin Thevenin (Associate Editors). The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy, 1-12.  Ranieri, M., Gaggioli, C., & Borges, M. K. (2020). La didattica alla prova del Covid-19 in Italia: uno studio sulla Scuola Primaria. Práxis Educativa (Brasil), 15.  Van Audenhove, L., Van den Broeck, W., & Mariën, I. (2020). Data literacy and education: Introduction and the challenges for our field. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 12(3), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2020-12-3-1  

Book Review - Stocchetti, M. (Ed.). (2020). The Digital Age And Its Discontents: Critical Reflections in Education. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press

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Book Review - Stocchetti, M. (Ed.). (2020). The Digital Age And Its Discontents: Critical Reflections in Education. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press

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