Date: 17 November 2021, 2.00pm - 3.00pm

Session leader: Naomi Wells

This session provides an introduction to research opportunities and approaches in relation to digital culture, with a primary focus on contemporary born-digital cultural forms and practices. As well as providing examples of existing Modern Languages research in this field, the session introduces a selection of key methodological approaches and tools for digital culture research, as well as exploring the challenges and ethical issues involved.

Digital Culture and Modern Languages: Introduction and Overview

Digital Culture and Modern Languages: Methods, Tools and Ethics

Key reading

Jones, Rodney H., et al., editors. Discourse and Digital Practices: Doing Discourse Analysis in the Digital Age. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. (Introduction available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0kOhBgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&hl=en&source=newbks_fb&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false) 

Pitman, Thea, & Taylor, Claire. “Where’s the ML in DH? And Where’s the DH in ML? The Relationship between Modern Languages and Digital Humanities, and an Argument for a Critical DHML”. Digital Humanities Quarterly 11, no. 1(2017). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/1/000287/000287.html.

Ortega, Élika. ‘Media and Cultural Hybridity in the Digital Humanities’. PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 135, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 159–64. doi:10.1632/pmla.2020.135.1.159.

Extended reading list

Androutsopoulos, Jannis. ‘Potentials and Limitations of Discourse-Centred Online Ethnography’. Language@Internet, vol. 5, 2008, https://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2008/1610.

Armstrong, Guyda, and Emanuela Patti (2020) Italian Studies and the Digital, Italian Studies, 75:2, 194-208, DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2020.1744867

Arriaga, Eduard, and Andrés Villar. Afro-Latinx Digital Connections. University Press of Florida, 2021. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/83735

Brügger, Niels, and Ralph Schroeder. The web as history: using web archives to understand the past and the present. UCL Press, 2017.

Cru, Josep. ‘Language Revitalisation from the Ground up: Promoting Yucatec Maya on Facebook’. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 36, no. 3, Apr. 2015, pp. 284–96. doi:10.1080/01434632.2014.921184.

Dombrowski, Quinn. ‘Preparing Non-English Texts for Computational Analysis’. Modern Languages Open, vol. 1, Aug. 2020, p. 45. doi:10.3828/mlo.v0i0.294.

Fielding, Nigel, et al., editors. The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods. London : SAGE, 2017.

Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication. Routledge, 2015.

Herrero, Carmen. ‘From New Literacies to Transmedia Literacies: The New Approaches to Transmedia and Languages Pedagogy Project’. Innovative Language Teaching and Learning at University: A Look at New Trends, by Nelson Becerra et al., Research-publishing.net, 2019, pp. 19–26. doi:10.14705/rpnet.2019.32.898.

Holmes, Tori. ’Ethical Dilemmas in Studying Blogging by Favela Residents in Brazil’. In D. Castillo, & S. Puri (Eds.), Theorizing Fieldwork in the Humanities: Methods, Reflections, and Approaches to the Global South (pp. 131-149). Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Huc-Hepher, Saskia. ‘The Material Dynamics of a London-French Blog: A Multimodal Reading of Migrant Habitus’. Modern Languages Open, vol. 0, no. 0, Sept. 2016. doi:10.3828/mlo.v0i0.91.

Lee, Carmen K. M., and David Barton. ‘Constructing Glocal Identities Through Multilingual Writing Practices on Flickr.Com®’. International Multilingual Research Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, Feb. 2011, pp. 39–59. doi:10.1080/19313152.2011.541331.

Ogden, Rebecca. ‘Instagram Photography of Havana: Nostalgia, Digital Imperialism and the Tourist Gaze’. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 98, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 87–107. doi:10.3828/bhs.2021.6.

Patti, Emanuela. ‘The Readers’ Experience in Experimental Narratives’. Journal of Romance Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 1–6. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.3828/jrs.2016.160101. (introduction to a Special Issue on this subject)

Pérez-González, Luis. ‘Co-Creational Subtitling in the Digital Media: Transformative and Authorial Practices’. International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 3–21. doi:10.1177/1367877912459145.

Pitman, Thea. ‘Warriors and Weavers: The Poetics and Politics of Indigenous Appropriations of New Media Technologies in Latin America’. Modern Languages Open, vol. 2018, no. 1, July 2018. doi:10.3828/mlo.v0i0.207.

Pitman, Thea, & Taylor, Claire. “Where’s the ML in DH? And Where’s the DH in ML? The Relationship between Modern Languages and Digital Humanities, and an Argument for a Critical DHML”. Digital Humanities Quarterly 11, no. 1 (2017). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/1/000287/000287.html.

Sadler, Neil. ‘Narrative and Interpretation on Twitter: Reading Tweets by Telling Stories’. New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 9, Sept. 2018, pp. 3266–82. doi:10.1177/1461444817745018.

Spence, Paul & Brandão, Renata. 2Attitudes towards digital culture and technology in the Modern Languages. Digital Mediations, King's College London, 2019. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-001

Taylor, Claire, and Thea Pitman, editors. Latin American Cyberculture and Cyberliterature. Univ. Press, 2007.

Varis, P. and Wang, X. Superdiversity on the Internet: A Case from China. Diversities. 2011, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. , UNESCO. ISSN 2079-6595
www.unesco.org/shs/diversities/vol13/issue2/art5