Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric : Centering Positionality in Computers and Writing Scholarship

Methods and Methodologies explores how researchers theorize, design, enact, reflect on, and revise digital writing research. The contributors to the two volumes of this edited collection explore how digital technologies can be used to solve problems, challenge the status quo, and address inequities. In some cases, they do so by using familiar digital technologies in novel ways. In other cases, they explain the use of relatively new or less familiar technologies such as digital mapping apps, Twitter bots, audio-visual captions, and computer programming code. By reflecting on the lessons that emerged from their work—and in particular on their own positionality—the authors provide methodological narratives that are personal, professional, and individual yet foundational. By combining attention to human positionality and digital technology, Methods and Methodologies addresses important social issues and questions related to writing and rhetoric.

Victor Del Hierro is assistant professor of Digital Rhetoric and Technical Communication in the English department at the University of Florida and associate director of the TRACE Innovation Initiative. His research focuses on the intersection between hip-hop, technical communication, and community. Previous work has been published in Communication Design Quarterly, Composition Studies Journal, and  Bilingual Review.

Crystal VanKooten is associate professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Oakland University in Rochester, MI, where she teaches courses in the Professional and Digital Writing major and in first-year writing. She serves as comanaging editor of The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (JUMP+) and her publications appear in journals that include College English, Computers and Composition, Enculturation, and Kairos. She is the author of Transfer across Media: Using Digital Video in the Teaching of Writing.