Literate Cities Survey Still Illiterate
KGW News has a short burst on this year’s rankings of literate cities, and it reminds me that I complained two years ago about the survey’s criteria and methodology.
The last two elements on the [Internet Resources] list are “Number of unique visitors per capita to a city’s internet version newspaper” and “Number of webpage views per capita to a city’s internet version newspaper”. (No mention of any other Internet content as a criteria for literacy.)
As any literate Oregonian knows, traffic to OregonLive could hardly be considered a proper gauge of Portland’s literacy. So, we know at least one category in this study has an entirely faulty construction.
It occurs to me this time around that the other flaw in the survey’s criteria is that it is entirely about consumption, leaving aside any consideration of creation. No survey of levels of blogosphere activity. No mention of zine production. Even in the realm of consumption, there’s no discussion of attendance at literary events, be they part of national campaigns (e.g. author’s book tours) or part of the local scene (e.g. storytelling events).
All of this seems to be a rather unfortunately illiterate reading of what it means to be literate, whether as a person or a city.
It doesn’t especially matter to me where Portland ranks on such a list. What matters is that local news departments keep blindly regurgitating a survey on literacy that doesn’t actually represent the literacy of the localities they serve — a “cut and paste” approach to reporting which itself then doesn’t serve a literate understanding of the story on the part of their readers and viewers.
So much illiteracy surrounding an alleged survey of municipal literacy. That few seem to notice the irony arguably might undercut the reported results.
Update: It should be noted that the survey does include magazine and journal publication, and so in one small regard it considers creation in addition to consumption. But the criteria arguably is too limited for it to truly reflect the full level of local literacy.
