Get Smart Fast: A structural analysis of Internet-based collaborative knowledge environments for critical digital media autonomy

This study seeks to explore digital media interaction for critical educational practice. Collaborative knowledge environments are examined as systems that combine Internet collaboration and cognitive hypermedia with intelligent systems approaches to content and user activity analysis. Structural and semiotic media analysis methods are employed to identify and articulate the functional components of these sophisticated networked computer environments from practical and critical media analysis perspectives. Digital media interaction codes are identified and organized to foreground implicit relationships from the user perspective and to facilitate the articulation of textual structure and information flow across a range of networked applications. While the technology examined is complex, a democratic media education framework provides practical guidelines for evaluation in this investigation. The study results propose a generic interaction model for social-cultural investigations in digital media and include critical questions for problematizing common sense interface constructions in the effort to foster the development of critical autonomy for practitioners and participants.