Media literacy can be understood in different ways: there are several ways to approach media education. The starting point, however, must always be the traditional concept of ‘literacy’; therefore, the traditional definition of it as it was defined back in 1957 is still valid to this day. We have to start from the assumption that it is not really possible to speak of illiterate and literate persons as two different categories: literacy is a spectrum of variability in the capacity of understanding and making sense of the world.

Modern literacy comprises a set of capacities that ultimately bring to ‘digesting’ inputs and re-elaborating them: we are consuming informative material in every form. The difference is in how you remix things and how much you are able to impact on the world.

Educator and researcher Doug Belsahw discusses his digital literacy (or rather digital literacies) framework: the eight essential elements of digital literacies are, according to Belshaw, the cognitive, the constructive, the communicative, the civic, the critical, the creative, the confident and the cultural. Digital literacy practices change over time and we need a very flexible and ready mind to be able to adapt to changes.

He argues that remix is at the heart of this framework, as it requires the most uses of these competences at once.