Digital literacy and the active audience: Growing objective knowledge and creative imagination in post-broadcast media

Audiences are transforming from 'effects of media' into 'agents of knowledge.' Digital literacy has implications not only for teenage consumerism but also (simultaneously) for the growth of science, imagination and innovation, using the creative capital of whole populations. Instead of the industrial-era publisher/provider model of causation in creative media, it is now possible to propose a demand model of creativity in an evolutionary model of the economy. This sees creative culture in terms of the growth of knowledge among the entire population, not merely among industry or artistic experts. Instead of being the objects of causal sequence, audiences become its subject, navigating as agents, not being pushed around as passive effects. This model pushes out towards the future, not the past; it is an 'emergent' model of innovation. Here creativity may be located as part of 'human capital' – the abundant resource numbering billions, formerly known as the audience.