Deficit Production: Using metatheory and the deficit model to rethink communicative (digital and media) literacy

With the past several years of disruption emphasizing the continued impact of distributed, global information networks, the focus on mis/dis/mal-information has led to numerous programs aimed to improve media literacy. These aim to improve understanding of media production processes, encourage fact checking, and rebuild trust in ‘expertise’ over dependence on intuitive or anecdotal knowledges. In this presentation, we work to unpack some of the implied thinking behind media literacy, drawing on science communication literature and our metatheoretical analysis of the deficit model (Maras et al., in preparation) to consider how deficit thinking can be implicit in literacy projects. Where deficit thinking persists in discussions of media literacy, we argue that it simultaneously produces a ‘double deficit’ that can problematically ignore the contexts within which publics engage, think, and act. We identify how a double deficit model operates praxeologically and axiologically, therefore opening new opportunities for inclusive transdisciplinary thinking.