The "uses of literacy" revisited in the multimedia age

Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy was published 50 years ago in 1957. It was an intellectual response to the challenge of mass media and it was also a popular bestseller in its own right. It set the agenda for educational and disciplinary reform that lasted a generation. Since the 1950s, the communications and entertainment media have grown to unprecedented power and pervasiveness. These media have also been at the forefront of changes in information, technological acceleration, consumerism and globalisation. If we do live in a commercial but humane democracy, as Hoggart fervently hoped that we would, the popular media are a chief means for interconnecting both the human and the democratic parts of society, and for linking expert elites in government, business and the professions with the general population. What are the 'uses of digital literacy' in a multimedia world?

Publication details:
John Hartley (2007) ‘The “uses of literacy” revisited in the multimedia age’, Words’Worth, publication of the English Teachers' Association of Queensland (ETAQ).