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Critical Responses | Informative Summaries | Works Cited

Literary Research Methods
The chapters' evidence is derived from a range of research methods. Each chapter reviews the culture of literacy within a broader national culture prior to discussing specific, online literacy practices. This background information on a nation's literacy is presented through discussions of cultural and literary history (Gruber and Csomay, Holmevik and Haynes, Sloane and Johnstone), education history (McConaghy and Snyder; Kitalong and Kitalong; Romano, Field and de Huergo; Sullivan and Fernandez), and language history (Dragona and Handa, Sugimoto and Levin). Once the literacy practices are contextualized within a nation’s overarching culture, the chapters move to describing the current, online literacy practices. These descriptions synthesize data derived from a variety of research methods. Some chapters use surveys of small to medium sized groups of people to elicit information (Gruber and Csomay; Dragona and Handa; Romano, Field, and de Huergo), while other chapters survey the literacy practices shown through online postings of a representative group of people (Kitalong and Kitalong, Sugimoto and Levin, Richardson and Lewis) or through the web pages designed by and about a group of people (McConaghy and Snyder; Kitalong and Kitalong; Holmevik and Haynes; Sullivan and Fernandez; Romano, Field, and de Huergo; Richardson and Lewis). Two chapters also rely heavily on follow up interviews (Gruber and Csomay, Sullivan and Fernandez).  Sloane and Johnstone derive their evidence by closely analyzing their own literacy practices and their motives behind those practices.
          Because the research methods are not systematically developed or applied throughout the text, the resulting data is not systematic. Instead, the text’s methods and data range from qualitative analyses of a limited number of case studies to quantitative reports of overall trends within a subculture. This variety of methods and results does not lend itself to supporting general or theoretical conclusions or to constructing an overall theory or methodology, though Hawisher and Selfe do draw out some intriguing, tentative conclusions. Nevertheless, some readers may fault this apparent lack of consistency. Yet a consistently applied research method could potentially treat the participants and their cultures as uniform. Such a standardized research method could reaffirm the global village narrative’s homogenizing and westernizing of the Web, with the resulting erasure of ethnicities and cultural identities. So the flexibility of the research methods used in these chapters enable the researchers to adjust their  methods to more appropriately study the participants given their distinct cultural contexts. This variety of methods and evidence rejects the homogenizing effects of a standardized set of research methods, and the resulting inconsistency among the chapters supports the text's larger goal of understanding the diversity of peoples who are reading and writing the Web.