Reading Research Quarterly, 40(1), 7-12. 1 Researching Literacy as Tool, Place, and Way of Being

Poised as we are at the edge of an expanding wave of digital technologies, researchers are faced with the task of finding firm footing within a rapidly changing landscape of computer-mediated communication and digital literacies. Yet, this task is complicated (if not hindered) by a political climate that places a high premium on randomized experimental trials based on the presumed-relevant medical model of research (cf. Reyna, 2002) and an education administration that has now tied research funding to ‘scientifically-based ’ studies narrowly defined as such (Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, 2002). The resulting situation is one in which the phenomena of study are ever widening while the range of methods considered legitimate for their investigation is increasingly narrowed. While ‘clinical trial ’ quantitative methodologies may have valuable contributions to make to our knowledge of new technologies (for example, in establishing the effects of various patterns of use), their immediate application may very well be putting the horse before the cart. In the context of new digital technologies, assuming the nature and meaning of (countable) variables and categories a priori, for example, runs the risk of obscuring rather than illuminating the nuances of meaning-making practices within their indigenous contexts of use. In the growing global digital economy, ‘item producers ’ are transforming themselves into ‘service providers,’ allowing ‘consumers ’ to produce their own original work, be it narrative (in the case of fan fiction), social/material virtual worlds (in the case of massively multiplayer online games), or experience itself (in the case of single player videogames). In so doing, they offer new contexts and resources for forms of semiotic work / play that challenge antiquated models where production and consumption are held as separate ends of the meaning-making process (d