ABSTRACT
We seem to be approaching a confl uence, verging on a zeitgeist,1 as researchers, theorists and applied scholars encourage our rethinking the nature of literacy practices and meaning making, especially within and across new and changing digital environments. They include: social anthropologists interested in digital literacies as literacy practices and events (e.g., Barton, 1994; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1984, 2003); cultural and critical theorists intent on studying the politics of individuals and group identities (Fairclough, 1992, 1995; Knobel & Lankshear, 2005; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, Lambert,1993, Lanham, 2002), linguists including socio-semioticians interested in the advent of language systems, especially the shifts in signs via new media (e.g., Baudrillard, 1981; Lemke, 1998, 2001; Kress, 1997, 1998, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), cognitive psychologists interested in learning in the context of the new knowledge economies (e.g., Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 2000; Spiro, 2006), literary theorists intrigued by discussions of author-reader-text relationships provoked by new forms of text (e.g., Landow, 1994 a, b; Miall & Kuiken, 1994; Miall 1999), and educators interested in the nature and role in learning (e.g., Cope & Kalantzy, 2000; Constanzo, 1994; Leu, 2006; Luke, 2005; New London Group, 1996; Pahl & Roswell, 2005; Reinking, 1997; Stein, 2004).
