Abstract

It is easy to point out the myriad ways writing now permeates our lives: We dash off texts as we wait for a bus, write a report for work with a colleague via Google Docs, update our blogs on our tablets, and post on social media to protest unfair social conditions. Writing now occupies the interstices of our everyday lives, flowing in and across increasingly globalized networks (Appadurai, 1996; Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013), as a central means of participating in contemporary life (Freedman, Hull, Higgs, & Booten, 2016). Digitally networked writing practices expand and amplify participation in the social world, as people compose, remix, orchestrate, and assemble symbolic artifacts in ways that connect them with others (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011). Networked writing can be understood as a principal way of participating in textual ecologies, built through the collaborative creation, curation, and circulation of artifacts linked with people in complex networks. As a fundamental part of these ecologies, writing now includes more and more spatially oriented and aesthetically inclined forms across multiple modes, media, and languages (Bezemer & Kress, 2008; Canagarajah, 2012), affording new opportunities for people to collaborate with others to take action in areas of local and global concern (Flower, 2008; Stornaiuolo & Jung, in press).