{"id":1400,"date":"2026-11-03T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/?p=1400"},"modified":"2026-11-03T09:18:56","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T09:18:56","slug":"when-digital-skills-are-no-longer-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meediaradar.ee\/en\/when-digital-skills-are-no-longer-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"When digital skills are no longer enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Teaching digital literacy has to become critical. It has to teach people to ask questions about the power structures of the tech industry, platform design, algorithmic bias and commercial interests. Dr Anna Antonakis<\/strong>\u2019s talk at the National Library of Estonia\u2019s annual Media Education Conference offers a framework for doing this in practice.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Work your way through a difficult text in a library and you feel a sense of satisfaction. Anna Antonakis, a senior researcher in social design at Bern University of Applied Sciences, calls this identity development. The example belongs to a pairing she took from German-language literature to unpack what \u201ccritical\u201d means in digital literacy. Bildung refers to Humboldt\u2019s idea of critical thinking: the person stands at the centre of learning and matures gradually through self-reflective interaction with themselves and their surroundings. Ausbildung is geared towards labour-market qualifications: it has a clear beginning and end, and the goal is a diploma.
Last year, at the same conference, Antonakis spoke at length about platform design, European regulation and the ethics of content moderation. This year she approached AI from a more practical angle. Both talks made the same point: technical skills alone are no longer enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From skill to agency<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Paul Gilster introduced the term \u201cdigital literacy\u201d in 1997, he defined it through four competencies: knowledge assembly, evaluating information content, searching the internet and navigating hypertext. Antonakis framed critical digital literacy more broadly in her talk, as the ability to question the power structures, biases and ideologies that shape technologies and platforms. It also covers the effects of technology beyond personal use: on vulnerable groups, on the planet\u2019s resources and on data workers, whose working conditions are harsh.
With generative AI, research points to risks such as cognitive offloading, reduced productive struggle and weakened independent critical thinking. As an example of critical digital literacy in practice, Antonakis cited computer scientist Joy Buolamwini\u2019s book Unmasking AI<\/em>, which describes how facial recognition systems built by homogeneous teams misidentify women and people of colour because of biased data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A canvas for educators<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bern University of Applied Sciences has developed the Critical Digital Literacy Canvas<\/a> for this purpose. It brings together five dimensions of knowledge. Technicality means conscious use that does not create dependencies. Ethics treats technology as a socio-technical system embedded in values and power structures. History & Society asks how tools developed, where data comes from and what data is missing. Self-Reflexivity helps maintain a critical perspective. Impact & Creativity means using digital technologies to support human collaboration while preserving personal creativity, authorship and agency.
The Canvas offers reading and learning activities for different levels: for example, assessing ethical impact in technical projects, or having students design guidelines themselves. Antonakis recommended that educators use group activities, compare personal values with collective and planetary impacts, and make room for reflection and discussion. Instead of large language models, students can be introduced to smaller, task-specific, decentralised tools such as Research Rabbit. It is also worth explaining to learners that if they become dependent on an AI tool or lose control while using it, that is not the individual\u2019s fault: it is by design.
The Canvas is also an invitation: Antonakis asked for feedback and offered to collaborate. Her aim was to make everyone a participant in closing this gap, which she sees as a major challenge for education and research today. According to her, critical digital literacy is being advanced by civil society, libraries, everyday educators and researchers from various disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch the recording: \u201eMeediahariduse konverents 2026: miks valeinfo petab ka targemaid?\u201c<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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