نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 گروه هنر، پردیس کیش دانشگاه تهران. ایران.
2 گروه مطالعات عالی هنر دانشکده هنرهای تجسمی دانشگاه تهران
3 استادیار گروه نقاشی دانشکده هنر، دانشگاه الزهرا.
چکیده
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسندگان [English]
The Relationship between Visual Literacy and Digital Divide Based on Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Social Fields
ABSTRACT
Visual literacy or digital visual literacy has become a vitally essential skill for users of new technologies in the digital age. Visual literacy refers to a set of visual skills learned by use of human vision. The development of these skills lays the foundation for learning and an individual with visual literacy skills is able to perceive his environment and recognize and interpret visual movements, objects, symbols, etc.
Many disciplines including art, education, linguistics, philosophy and psychology have an effect on visual literacy, leading to the development of mankind’s visual knowledge, visual learning, visual thinking and visual communication. The theoretical foundations of visual literacy also stem from these areas. Visual literacy includes visual learning, visual thinking and visual communication with over 50 years of precedence as an academic field of research and teaching. Throughout these decades, influenced by the digital media, the world of visual communication has been drastically transformed. Specialists, professionals, the public at large, the older generations and children in particular who grow up with these technologies, constitute the scope of the users of new technologies. According to this, digital capital that has emerged as a new form of capital, functions as a bridge to obtain other capitals in all fields.
Depending on the field it is employed in, and some of the changes as prerequisite for the efficiency of the capital in a particular field, it can exist in three basic forms; as an economic capital that can immediately and directly turn to money and become institutionalized as property rights. As a cultural capital that can become economic capital under certain conditions and become institutionalized as academic certifications. And as social capital consisting of social obligations (relations), which can also change to economic capital under specific circumstances and become established as social classes.
Digital capital is a collection of digital skills (information, communication, safety, content creation and troubleshooting) and digital technology. Like all other capital, its continuous transfer and accumulation contributes to the maintenance of social inequalities. In Bourdieusian terms, we may define digital capital as "a set of internalized abilities and aptitude" (digital competencies) as well as "externalized resources" (digital technology) that can accumulate over time and move from one field to another. The level of digital capital that an individual possesses affects the quality of his experience of the Internet (the second level of the digital divide), which in turn may change to other forms of capital (economic, social, cultural, personal, and political). Hence, in the social sphere, it also affects the third level of the digital divide. But in an unfathomably complex future, an individual with a lack of advanced digital skills will not be able to utilize the tools available to the public, however intelligent and educated he may be. On another hand, the digital divide, despite its previous simplification above, is a multidimensional phenomenon linked to intricate issues involving all aspects of social life in the economic, political, cultural and social arenas.
According to Bourdieu's field theory, a change in the field or habitus will be bound to lead to change in another. The emergence of digital capital has brought about changes in the economic, cultural and social grounds. Change in the habitus, therefore, is imperative to reduce disruption in the field. Disruption is a term that Bourdieu uses to show cultural delay or lack of accordance between the habitus and the changing rules in the field.
Using Bourdieu's field theory, we suggest that in order to reduce disruption, the habitus of the social actors in the field who are users of the digital technologies, should be in line with and related to the changes in the field.
This research, therefore, based on Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, uses a descriptive-analytical method to explain the relationship between visual literacy skills as habitus for compatibility of actors in the field and the three-level digital divide, as an obstacle in acquiring digital capital. Eventually, considering the dialectics between habitus and capital in the field, it is deduced that visual literacy as habitus helps social actors to obtain digital capital and reproduce other capitals. This will be an important element in reducing the digital divide in the social field.
On the other hand, as visual literacy skills are acquired mainly through observation, when digital divide widens at levels one and two between social actors, it also escalates social inequalities and lack of access to capitals.
Keywords: Visual literacy, digital divide, habitus, digital capital, social field.
کلیدواژهها [English]
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