Critical Media Literacy in the Googleburg Galaxy

With the popular and the political competing for our global electronic attention what is often overlooked are questions surrounding access and participation on social media platforms, which have become contested domains of advertising, recruitment, propaganda, and activism. As the very definitions of what it means to be „literate“ or what constitutes a „text“ continue to change, having the ability to „read“ continues to hold significant importance. Marshall McLuhan argues in The Guttenberg Galaxy that the printing press created a paradigm shift. In removing the mystique from texts and making ideas more accessible not only did literacy rates rise, but for McLuhan, social relations and power dynamics were fundamentally and irrevocably changed. In line with a history of humanity that continually shifts power and social relations through uses of new technologies, this paper explores how new forms of language and social patterns of interactions on social media have created a similarly potent paradigm shift, changing the meaning of existence both online and in person. This is the Googleburg Galaxy.