Visual literacy has evolved alongside information literacy and media literacy, reflecting social, technological, and cultural changes. Rapidly advancing technology, multimodal access to information and disinformation, and political rhetoric increasingly impact the perception, trust, and use of visual media. These broader technological and cultural shifts also change what it means to be a visually literate individual in the twenty-first century. Although much has been written about visual literacy, there is very little that reviews scholarship that uses the 2011 ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Through an analysis of 196 articles published from 2011 to 2019, this study examines how the standards, which outline visual literacy competencies for learners in the twenty-first century, have been used since their adoption, by whom, and for what purposes. This study unveils an emerging shift in the paradigm of visual literacy scholarship.
This column explores the ways in which the new generation of librarians can position themselves at the front lines of the misinformation and "fake news" crisis by incorporating visual literacy and news literacy into information literacy lessons.
This innovative teaching idea, the Digital Image Guide (DIG) Method, addresses the pressing need to develop visual pedagogies in the university classroom by providing a technique for students to use to critically read digital images. This article also introduces the concept of shallow and deep images. It then explains the difference between the two types of images and how to use the DIG Method to dig deeper in order to understand deep images. By utilizing the DIG Method, students can learn to analyze, interpret, evaluate, and comprehend images found on social media sites and around the web, increasing their visual literacy skills in the process.
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