Literacy in Online Contexts
In public discourse, literacy is often narrowly construed as a skill set related to the decoding and encoding of print-based texts. However, this article draws from a sociocultural approach to literacy known as the New Literacy Studies (NLS) that provides a basis for more broadly conceptualizing writing and reading as communicative practices that are rooted within certain social, historical, and political contexts of use (Gee, 1999; Hull & Schultz, 2002; Lankshear & Knobel, 2006; Street, 1984). In recent decades, work within the NLS has attempted to “extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies” and to “account for the Breitling Replica burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies” (New London Group, 1996, n.p.). Such an approach is helpful for understanding the many shifts taking place as a great deal of contemporary communicative and meaning-making practices move to online, globally networked contexts. Moreover, it is particularly helpful to this article for understanding how many adolescent ELLs are developing language, literacy, and social skills across national borders, as they use new technological tools and semiotic forms to communicate, share information, and negotiate meaning with youths located in many different countries.
As many adolescents socialize and spend a great deal of time in such online, global social settings—the process of relocation for many immigrant youths also takes place at least partially in technology-mediated environments such as online discussion boards, social networking sites, fan communities, and video gaming environments. Thus, it is important to consider how youths’ literacy, learning, and identity practices are both shaped by and shape the interactions they have in online spaces (Jensen, 2003). In addition, such research can help us to understand how youths take on and negotiate social roles that may have implications for learning in both on- and offline spaces.
The primary context for the larger study, Affection .net (FFN), is the largest online fan fiction archive housing over a million fan fiction texts, with over 300,000 texts in the Harry Potter section alone FFN has servers in North America, Asia, and Europe and attracts fan authors from across the globe. Fan on the site compose and publicly post texts based or their favorite media canons—including books, music, movies, Japanese animation (anime), and video games—and then the audience has the option of reading and publicly posting feedback or reviews of the texts. Participation on the site extends beyond posting texts for entertainment, as fans engage in activities such as peer reviewing, collaborative writing, and exploring certain genres of writing. Participation also includes substantive discussion around composition as well as discussion of the themes and topics addressed in many of the fan fiction texts (Black, 2005, 2008). Ethnographic (Geertz, 1973) and discourse analytic (Gee, 1999) methods were used to gain a rich sense of the FFN community, as I spent three Breitling Replica Watches years as a participant observer on the site. Primary data sources were adolescent ELL focal participants’ fan fiction texts, leader reviews of these texts, and interviews with participants. The purpose of the larger study was to explore how this informal, online writing space Blight provide ELLs with access to literacy learning and how the virtual environment might promote affiliation with composing and interacting in English.
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