ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine how glitching – a digital practice that arises in video game play – mediated the development of emergent digital literacies for Richard, an eight-year-old child. Glitching in video game play involves the identification of video game system errors, or glitches, and appropriating them in ways that allow players to transform and expand how they participate within these games. The authors also examine emergent digital literacies that one eight-year-old child developed as he learned about glitching in video games within and across multiple digital platforms. They focus on third-generation cultural-historical activity theory to explore the everyday digital practices of a focal child, Richard, as he played and engaged with video games across multiple media platforms. The authors present the practice of glitching in the everyday routines of the Gonzalez (pseudonym) family, an immigrant Mexican family that was a part of their multi-sited ethnography.
