Adolescents’ Dialogic Composing With Mobile Phones

Abstract

This 14-month study examined the phone-based composing practice of three adolescents. Given the centrality of mobile phones to youth culture, the researcher sought to create a description of the participants’ composing practices with these devices. Focal participants were users of Twitter and Instagram, two social media platforms that are usually accessed by way of applications (mobile phone software). A Bakhtinian theoretical framework was used to locate composing as a social act involving relationships among multivocal texts and authors and audiences. Findings indicate that much of the participants’ literacy engagement was spontaneous, in the moment, reactive, and emergent. Another finding was that audience feedback informed text production. Finally, the practice of digital curation (appropriating others’ texts) was central to online phone-based composing practice.