A city or urban corridor with a high density of technology oriented creative industries and a strong array of public, private and public-private funded initiatives that foster their creation and growth.
Published in Chapter:
The Geography of Digital Literacy: Mapping Communications Technology Training Programs in Austin, Texas
Stuart Davis (Texas A&M International University, USA), Lucia Palmer (University of Texas at Austin, USA), and Julian Etienne (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Copyright: © 2016
|Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8740-0.ch022
Abstract
Building off of Straubhaar, Spence, Tufecki, and Lentz's Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender, and the Digital Divide in Austin, TX (2013), a ten-year study of how social, cultural, and economic tensions in Austin have been buried under the city's highly lauded model of technology-led development, this chapter discusses three programs that attempt to promote different forms of media and technology training within the city. Adapting a definition of “digital literacy” theorized by Jenkins (2009) that emphasizes competency, capacity, and empowerment, we examine how these programs present disparate yet potentially compatible approaches for harnessing the transformational potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within underrepresented, marginalized, or at-risk populations.