Advancing Social Media Literacy

What does it take to be literate on social media? What kinds of knowledge, skills, and competencies are needed for literate social media practice? This paper builds on language, media, information, digital, and cultural literacy to offer a definition of social media literacy that addresses the abilities needed to be an engaged, informed, ethical, and responsible social media user. The paper draws attention to skills of information evaluation, knowledge of production, cultural understanding, and knowledge of content moderation practices as necessary for social media literacy. The paper further argues that, due to the open, social, collective, and distributed nature of social media, literacy also includes recognizing how social network formations can facilitate or constrain the circulation of information, and the ability to engage and communicate on a public social forum through a medium that reaches across multiple locations, nations, and cultures.