Conceptualizing and Researching “New Literacies” COLIN LANKSHEAR, MICHELE KNOBEL, AND CAITLIN CURRAN References to “new literacies” have become increasingly common as use of digital tech- nologies has grown within everyday routines, reflecting a growing sense that “literacy” can no longer be presumed to refer simply to interactions with conventional texts. New Literacies as a General Concept “New literacies” mostly functions as an umbrella term for myriad everyday interactions with digital texts. The term “text” has itself been amplified to extend far beyond alphabetic– typographic texts alone. “Text” now covers all manner of multimedia artifacts that people can be said to read and write, interpret, and make meaning from in their daily lives. As a general classification, “new literacies” typically refers to interactions with digitized tex- tual material and other digital media. It is a general referent for “information literacy,” “multimodal literacy,” “digital literacy,” “(multi)media literacy,” “Internet literacy,” and so on (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008a). Understanding and using new media and technologies competently is another conception of “new literacies.” In this sense, being “savvy” with digital tools and techniques is seen as a new literacy (e.g., computer literacy). Numerous scholars also identify examples of new literacies that do not necessarily entail use of digital technologies and digitally coded meanings. These are literacies that can be regarded as chronologically rather than ontologically “new” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, p. 17) with one or more of the following characteristics: they are relatively recent—or recently popular—forms of literacy practice; they have only recently been conceived of as literacies; only recently have they been considered as literacies with which formal educa- tion should engage. Diverse “new” literacies of this type include (critical) media literacy, print-based zines and fan fiction, strategy card games, analogue media remixing, graphic novels, and certain forms of iconic and logo-based communications. Specific Conceptions of New Literacies in Research and Theory In contrast with such umbrella uses, researchers and scholars have begun conceptualizing new literacies in ways intended to help understand and explain a range of developments in human interaction and communication under contemporary media conditions. Several approaches can be distinguished—albeit with significant overlaps among them—within academic literature dating from the late 1990s. New Literacies in the Context of a Changing Communicative Order Brian Street (1998) conceptualizes new literacies by reference to a changing communicative order in which a range of nonlinguistic semiotic systems “cut across reading, writing and speech” (p. 9). Increased use of icons, images, and visual displays, as well as combinations The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol A. Chapelle. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0182