ABSTRACT
A key aspect of author approach to digital literacies is a commitment to an ethnographic approach. The chief reason for taking a sociocultural approach to digital literacies is an appreciation of the dynamic relationship between activities and context. Linguistic ethnography considers that language and the social world are mutually shaping, and that close analysis of situated language use can provide both fundamental and distinctive insights into the mechanisms and dynamics of social and cultural production in everyday activity. Central to ethnographic work is the activity of participant observation, of immersion in environments and societies studied, combined with other methods in an interpretive approach. An ethnographic perspective allows the researcher to find out the meaning of events for those who are involved in them. This entails investigating the contexts of the uses of literacy, the meanings of literacy, and the forms of literate communication as it is organized and plays a role in organizing particular social interaction.
