Images of literacy in reference CD ROMs and search websites for children

Abstract

In the technologised society, the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are becoming one of the main areas and tools of literacy activity. ICTs are also becoming one of the active ‘participants’ of literacy education. In the present paper, I discuss my ongoing doctoral research into the discursive construction of the child as a literate subject in reference CDROMs, online encyclopedias and search websites for children.

My research is driven by a number of questions: What notions of literacy are offered to the child user of ICT-based educational products? Whose literacy practices are represented as universal by their producers? Who may and may not benefit from technology-mediated literacy education? How is the child user of ICTs constructed as a literate, social and cultural subject and who is excluded by these constructions?

I am conducting my study within the approaches of social semiotics and discourse analysis. My objects of analysis are both verbal texts and images. Here, I will focus on images as ‘participants’ in the construction of the notions of literacy and on what the images of literacy in reference CDROMs imply about their users as literate, social and cultural subjects.