“Multiliteracies for Inclusive Technologies: A Case Study on Location-Based Services and Domestic Violence Survivors”
by Jennifer Roth Miller | Xchanges 12.1
Potential for Rhetoric & Composition
This case study suggests a link to the field of rhetoric and composition as an important point of contact to foster not only functional literacy skills, but also critical literacy skills in new generations of college students. Additionally, rhetorical literacy skills are important to develop as students move along in their studies and become working professionals who will shape the future (Selber, 2004). Since freshman composition is a first point of contact for many students, it is the perfect setting to develop these multiliteracies that will apply to every student no matter their major.
Fostering these multiliteracies provides significant opportunities for social change because these students will affect the future through their professional work and as critical technology consumers. Collectively refusing to engage with unjust technologies will cause them to either evolve to become fairer or fade away in a capitalist society. Many students naively buy into what these assemblages of technologies offer. This is concerning because this student age group, 18-35, is also at the highest risk for crimes greatly enabled by sharing location information such as sexual assault, stalking, intimate partner violence, and harassment (RAINN, 2009). Teaching critical literacy skills to consider the politics of technologies is important for all technology users.
In conclusion, location-based services on smartphones retrieve and supply relevant information to users, and at the same time they retrieve and supply information about users to the network. Values, beliefs, and politics advancing geodemographic business models are discreetly built into smartphone, application, and social media interfaces. This case study on the impact of geolocation services on domestic violence survivors revealed the importance of multiliteracies on several fronts in shaping just and inclusive new technologies. Rhetoric and composition teachers have an opportunity to affect social change by fostering these same multiliteracies in future generations of users and professionals. By arming forthcoming professionals with multiliteracies, they will be well positioned to critically unpack the politics of emerging technologies and enhance them with reflection.