Critical Digital Literacy – Refining Literacies from technical fluency to ethical and political agency

Critical digital literacy (also CDL) is an expanding field of profound importance for the future of both research and pedagogies. It redefines literacy from technical fluency to political and ethical agency—to question how platforms, algorithms, and media narratives shape our lives and impact most vulnerable groups and the planet.  However, we need systematization to make this expanding field actionable and teachable.  This article introduces the critical digital literacy canvas as a new resource available and ready to use.

The need for critical digital literacy

Critical Digital Literacy is an approach that aims at developing key competencies and awareness for citizens to ensure they are not only passive recipients and adopters of emerging technologies, but that they can understand and participate in promoting a more just and inclusive technology’s development and use, that can contribute to foster digital sovereignty.

As part of the BFH strategic priority Humane Digital Transformation, the Critical Digital Literacy project aimed at developing new resources through an interdisciplinary collaboration across different departments (HKB, W, HAFL). The project explored the best ways to introduce and support Critical Digital Literacy in our teaching and with our staff. The project was coordinated by Paola Pierri from HKB, together with Anna Antonakis, Nada Endrissat and Roger Robyr. The aim was to map the many initiatives and courses that were already happening at BFH and develop new resources that could advance critical questions related to the impact of emerging technologies on our societies and democracies.

New technologies are developed and introduced in our lives at an incredible pace: It is increasingly difficult to fully understand their impact and to reflect on the consequences of their use. This includes for example misinformation, algorithmic bias and digital inequalities, as well as the impact on our environmental resources and on democracy at large. Young professionals, among others, are likely to be early adopters of these technologies but might struggle to develop critical questions about how these technologies work, their logic and impact on social cohesion, democratic practices and environmental resources.

Building on recent studies and CDL materials in the field  as well as the different expertise and collaborative work and workshops with colleagues from across BFH, the project developed a Critical Digital Literacy Canvas for raising awareness on critical approaches to digital literacy and ensuring students’ agency in adopting emerging technologies with a critical mindset.

The five knowledge dimensions of the CDL canvas

The Critical Digital Literacy Canvas (also CDLC) is a practical tool that is aimed at inspiring and supporting teachers and staff to introduce questions about digital technology through a critical lens. It covers 5 knowledge dimensions:

1. Technicality: Promoting the conscious use of technology that serves human beings and optimises processes without creating dependencies.
2. Ethics: Understanding technology as a socio-technological system with embedded values and purposes; and being aware of the consequences of their use for oneself and others (including the environment).
3. History & Society: Being aware of the historical development of digital tools and data, as well as their socio-economic costs.
4. Self-Reflexivity: Maintaining a critical perspective on the use of digital tools, apply them autonomously and purposefully to promote positive outcomes.
5. Impact & Creativity: Using digital technologies creatively to support meaningful human collaboration while preserving and strengthening human agency.

They are central for a critical understanding and use of digital technologies. For each of these knowledge dimensions, the Canvas identifies learning objectives according to different levels of knowledge.  In each knowledge domain, the Canvas suggests a series of reading and learning activities that can prompt reflections and support the building of specific competences (such as the AI decision tree or visual material examining the social and environmental impact of producing smartphones).

Two aspects were central when we designed the Canvas:

• To have a focus beyond technicality and on the critical dimensions of emerging digital technologies
• To include learning objectives and activities for fostering new ‘attitudes’ and ‘mindsets’

The first key point of the Canvas is to adopt a ‘critical’ approach to digital literacy that includes additional dimensions beyond learning about and applying the technologies. Recent scholarship and CDL resources in fact acknowledges that digital literacy surpasses mere technical ability and skills – it demands a capacity to question the power structures, biases, and ideologies shaping digital tools and platforms and requires ethical and social responsibility.

Adding knowledge domains ‘Ethics’ or ‘History & Society’ is therefore a central step in the Canvas to position technology in context and to promote its critical use and understanding. Through an historical approach – for instance – we aim to start questioning the underlying assumptions about human nature embedded in different technologies, as well as commit to promoting technologies that enhance human potential and democratic engagement.

Secondly, the Canvas aims to integrate – next to skills and knowledge which are the focus of most pedagogical approaches to digital technologies – a focus on ‘attitudes’, and a reflective stance (in German ‘Haltung’). In the Canvas we therefore identify learning objectives and activities that are specific for developing new attitudes and mindsets about how we frame / evaluate / and value emerging technologies. Although ‘attitudes’ are very difficult to measure or evaluate, we believe they are central to a more ‘critical’ approach to digital literacy. Cultivating attitudes is in fact considered to be the best approach towards motivating and supporting ‘agency’ in education.

Reference: Hanna Barakat & Cambridge Diversity Fund / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Putting the CDLC to practice

To use the Canvas, educators can pick one or more knowledge dimensions and identify the learning objectives more appropriate, as well as learning activities for different levels of knowledge.

Each activity is designed to be concrete, social, and reflective, and is supported by practical and structured examples, clear objectives, and explicit links to the dimensions of the Canvas. Social activities also allow for the exploration of participants’ different ‘Attitude’ during activities and discussions.

Finally, we found that these shared educational principles can be helpful to put the CDLC to practice:

• Predominantly group-based activities
• Comparison between personal values and interests and their collective impacts
• Conscious (and at times intentionally improper) use of technologies to encourage reflection on their consequences
• Inclusion of diverse technologies, such as AI, smartphones, social media, digital platforms, blockchain, and cybersecurity-oriented approaches
• Centrality of reflection and discussion, both during and at the end of each activity

References

Link to the Critical Digital Literacy Canvas https://www.datocms-assets.com/47062/1780900085-260603_cdl_fe-def2.pdf

Antonakis, A. (2026). The C is not silent – A Scoping Review of Critical Digital Literacy(CDL). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20450951

Fisseler, B. (2024). Digital Accessibility Literacy. ASSETS 2024 Workshop Teaching Accessibility in Different Disciplines: Topics, Approaches, Resources, Challenges https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.11931

Hague, C. & Payton, S. (2021). Digital literacy across the curriculum: a Futurelab handbook. The National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/media/jnhety2n/digital_literacy_across_the_curriculum.pdf

Kennedy, K., & Gupta, A. (2025.). AI & Data Competencies: Scaffolding holistic AI literacy in Higher Education. https://academyforeducationalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kennedy-gupta-final-1.pdf

Critical Digital Literacy Education Guide and worksheet (2020). http://education.historicacanada.ca/en/tools/645 Historica Canada.

The glassroom project. Out of Hand. https://theglassroom.org/en/what-the-future-wants/exhibits/out-of-hand/

The AI Decision Tree. Oregon state University. ECampus. https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/faculty/artificial-intelligence-tools/decision-tree/