ATS1119 Chap.1 Digital Literacy, AI and Storytelling
Digital Literacy, AI and Storytelling
Digital literacy begins with the relationship among a person, a practice and a setting. Reading a platform means noticing its interface and conventions, but also the identities, resources and institutions that make participation possible. A notification, recommendation or share button is not a neutral instruction: it invites particular actions and makes others difficult.
Critical literacy adds questions of source, authority, data and exclusion. Generative AI sharpens those questions because plausible language can detach a claim from a visible author or traceable source. Verification therefore precedes stylistic judgement. Storytelling offers a productive response. A story organises change for an audience through selection, sequence, perspective and medium.
Digital stories may combine links, comments, image, sound and interface, so the path through the material is part of the meaning. The newsletter task turns these principles into practice by defining a public, articulating an editorial promise, linking useful material and reflecting on what AI-generated or existing prose can and cannot do.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Digital literacy
- 02
Provenance
- 03
Narrative event
- 04
Literacy as social practice
- 05
Access, skill and participation
- 06
Generative AI provenance and bias
- 07
Narrative event, change and perspective
- 08
Links and multimodal sequencing
- 09
Newsletter purpose and public
Audit an AI-assisted newsletter paragraph
- 1Replace the universal audience with a defined public and a concrete need.
- 1Identify any factual claim that requires a traceable source or link.
- 1Revise generic benefits into an editorial promise the newsletter can actually deliver.
- 1Record the AI contribution and retain the author's responsibility for the final wording.
Key terms
- Digital literacy
- Situated practices for interpreting, evaluating and composing through digital media.
- Provenance
- The traceable origin and transformation history of a claim, image or media object.
- Narrative event
- A selected occurrence whose change or consequence gives a story movement.
Digital Literacy, AI and Storytelling FAQ
Why call literacy situated?
The same interface action can have different meanings in a classroom, workplace, fan community or political campaign. Competence depends on norms, goals, access and relationships rather than a universal checklist of buttons.
What is the first test for an AI output?
Ask which claims need verification and whether their sources can be recovered. Style editing comes later because polished wording cannot repair absent evidence. Record the source trail before revising the wording.
How does a link contribute to storytelling?
A link can supply evidence, invite a branch, locate a community or interrupt sequence. Its rhetorical job must be named; adding many links does not automatically make a story interactive.
What gives an About page a public purpose?
It identifies whom the publication serves, what recurring value it offers and why the chosen voice and links fit that relationship. A broad topic alone is not an editorial promise.
Can an existing sample be analysed without generative AI?
Yes. The current task offers an alternative using an existing About page, with full reference details and analysis in the student's own words. The required acknowledgement rules still apply.
Assessment move
Build a four-column ledger headed practice, participant, platform and power. Put every example into all four columns before applying a concept. For story exercises, identify the initial situation, consequential change, selected perspective and medium-specific route.
For AI-assisted work, preserve prompts or drafts as process evidence, verify external claims, and write the acknowledgement while the process is still visible rather than reconstructing it at submission. Run a weekly provenance drill with one factual sentence from a generated draft.
Locate the strongest recoverable source, record its author, date, institutional setting and scope, then rewrite the sentence so its certainty matches that evidence. Compare the revised claim with its source and flag every inference the source does not state directly. Next, test the same idea as a newsletter lead and as a short linked sequence.
Note what the new form foregrounds, what context it removes and which audience knowledge it assumes. Keep the prompt, raw response, verification trail and final editorial choice together; that record makes acknowledgement accurate and reveals where human judgement changed the material. End the week by asking a peer to identify the intended public and editorial promise without being told either.
If their reading differs, revise the selection and order of evidence rather than merely adding emphasis. Use the final ten minutes to label each sentence as observation, sourced fact, interpretation or proposal. If a sentence changes category while being revised, restore the missing citation or qualification.
This simple audit also shows whether links deepen the story’s evidence path or merely send the reader away without a reason. Finally, compare one source-backed sentence with the generated draft and explain every change in scope, tone or certainty. That commentary demonstrates editorial responsibility more clearly than a generic claim that the output was checked.
Keep rejected wording beside the reason for rejecting it, especially when verification narrows a persuasive claim.
Working through Digital Literacy, AI and Storytelling in ATS1119? Sia is AskSia’s AI Media Studies tutor — ask any ATS1119 Digital Literacy, AI and Storytelling question and get a clear, step-by-step explanation grounded in how ATS1119 is taught and assessed. Read this chapter free, then take your hardest questions to Sia.
ATS1060 World History · ATS1298 Professional Writing · ATS2946 Critical Thinking
