Web 2.0 versus "New" Literacy

Is the concept of Web 2.0 considered a “New” literacy? Let’s review the following definition:

"The more a literacy practice that is mediated by digital encoding, privileges participation over publishing, distributed expertise over centralized expertise, collective intelligence over individual possessive intelligence, collaboration over individuated authorship, dispersion over scarcity, sharing over ownership, experimentation over ‘normalization’, innovation and evolution over stability and fixity, creative innovative rule breaking over generic purity and policing, relationship over information broadcast, do-it-yourself creative production over professional service delivery, and so on, the more sense we think it makes to regard it as a new literacy." 


--Lankshear, Colin, and Knobel, Michele. (2007). Researching new literacies: Web 2.0 practices and insider perspectives. E-Learning, 4 (3), 224-240. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.224 (Shorter read from NCTE)


Web 2.0 is constantly evolving, as it uses web applications to employ new methods in order to distribute information. It facilitates participatory information sharing through user-centered design. It’s all about do-it-yourself creative production in an easy-to-use format. Based on the above definition, what could be more "new" literacy than that?

Web 2.0 is mediated by digital encoding privileges and privileges participation over publishing, just as the above definition of new literacy describes. This is absolutely true of Web 2.0 when considering social media, blogging, microblogging, and using YouTube. Collective intelligence is absolutely favored over individual possessive intelligence, as is shown through sights like Creative Commons and Wikipedia. In Creative Commons, people share their photos and videos with others, thereby lending their intelligence to add to the intelligence and productions of others. In Wikipedia, collaboration is key, as experts and novices from around the globe submit their thoughts on interesting subjects. This keeps with the same theme of sharing versus ownership and innovation over stability and rigidity.

Web 2.0, although surrounded by competing definitions across the board, can essentially be described as a web platform that facilitates participatory information sharing through user-centered design (Wikipedia). Based on this, it's absolutely a "new" literacy, and should be embraced as such.