ABSTRACT
Research into the use of Spanish on the internet has attracted considerable attention among scholars over the last decades. This chapter aims to introduce readers to this field of research. Section 2 provides a working definition of digital discourse analysis and then reviews existing research. First, it traces the evolution of the field in terms of three waves of studies of technology-mediated communication. The waves evolve from a focus on formal, linguistic descriptions of the language of the internet, through socially oriented approaches that focus on diversity and variability, community, and identity, to more recent critical, multimodal perspectives. Next, it discusses current issues on Spanish digital discourse organized around four areas of interest; namely, text, context, action and interaction, and ideology and power. Section 3 focuses on methodological issues concerning frameworks, data, and research ethics. This chapter ends, in Section 4, with the identification of venues for future research.
