Media literacy normalizes data extraction rather than resisting it and fails in practice.
Evidence
We do not deny that media literacy may have some benefits in the immediate term, but we should not pretend that media literacy is a means to resist data colonialism; at most, it enables us to live more at ease with it, thus normalizing it for the longer term. Worse, like all notions of literacy, media literacy relies on the virtuous “disposition” of the subject, which misses how the new order works to dismantle the autonomy of the subject. In any case, media literacy soon comes up against some practical limits. When US sociologist Janet Vertesi applied her media literacy by leaving no data traces during her pregnancy, she found basic economic activity increasingly difficult, until, finally, her husband’s attempt to buy cash vouchers to pay for a baby stroller on Amazon was arbitrarily blocked by a store algorithm. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 590
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the attention/surveillance school’s critique of ‘digital detox’ and individual ‘literacy’ fixes — the rival frame the reader is comparing against. — connects to: Data extraction needs to feel natural and normal, not like theft, to stabilize — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 134
- SEED: Vertesi’s blocked stroller purchase is a vivid anecdote for an essay on how algorithmic systems make opting out economically impossible, not merely inconvenient.
- ADDENDUM: Ties to ‘Grafting & Growth’ framing of infrastructure coercion: the data grid, like tree infrastructure, imposes costs on anyone who refuses to route through it.
Broader Connections
- Data extraction needs to feel natural and normal, not like theft, to stabilize
#corroborates(0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 134