Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Computers and Composition 56 (2020) 102576 Young Authors Online: Exploring the Meaning Making Process Through Positionings in Place and Space Grace Pigozzi Purdue University, United States Received 6 October 2018; accepted 7 April 2020 Available online 26 May 2020 Abstract Identity studies in education are germane to interpreting how adolescent writers perceive their lives, culture, and, in literacy, their schooling and educational goals. Positioning theory analysis helps reveal both tacit and explicit patterns of meaning making as authors collaborate and craft creative writing artifacts shared as blog posts. In this study of interactions around the digital writing of young authors aged 12 to 16 years, participants self-selected writing topics and genres from nondominant culture through a connected learning design. Transformations of power structures occurred along storylines as writers positioned themselves and others while taking on new tasks. This study looks at conversation around writing in terms of people, their modes of embodiment, the online writing context, and compares the establishment of rights and duties located in the physical space where participants gathered to those established on the Internet blog space. © 2020 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords: Multimodality; Adolescent Writing; Identity; Online Writing; Literacy; Positioning Theory 1. Introduction At first, Rosie preferred to write alone. However, she frequently posted comments on the writing of her peers: middle and high school students who gathered on Saturdays one winter to learn blogging while sharing creative writing. As the youngest member, 12 year-old Rosie rarely engaged in conversation, and few of the other authors wrote comments on her posts. That changed the morning that the writers decided to read aloud to one another. As Rosie completed reading her poem, “Why Violence?” for the first time, the reaction was initially a stunned silence. One by one, listeners began snapping their fingers, poetry-slam style, and eventually gave Rosie a standing ovation. The contrast between readers’ responses in physical place with that of Internet space was remarkable, as was writers’ awareness of audience. The way in which Rosie had positioned herself as a competent, socially aware writer in her blog space was suddenly concrete, igniting robust audience participation in her creative writing. Expanding the creative zone of the online space to include physical meeting place had allowed for a new type of connection between bloggers. E-mail address: gpigozzi@purdue.edu https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2020.102576 8755-4615/© 2020 Published by Elsevier Inc.