Writing and Digital Media

Citation

Doldi, L. (2008), "Writing and Digital Media", Online Information Review, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 120-121. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520810868090

Digital media have become a powerful tool in many fields of human activities and their force is increasing. The book presented is concerned especially with the effects of digital media on writing processes. Research on this topic is roughly 25 years old and in this space of time it has produced a better understanding of how different mediums of production tend to shape writing processes.

The book is organised in five sections, each with several papers of outstanding Australian, European and American researchers. The first section, Writing Modes and Writing Environments, illustrates the effects of writing environments on writing processes and considers especially environments that support writing with speech technology and their functionality for different user groups. The second section, Writing and Communication, provides concrete examples of new usage of language afforded by digital media, as by chatting or producing texts with hypermedia elements. At the same time the chapters illustrate the properties of social interaction and the pedagogical opportunities afforded by new media.

The third section, Digital Tool for Writing Research, contains reports of new digital tools for analysing writing products and processes. The technologies described (website evaluation tools, word spelling analysis tools and words tag tools among others) represent the cutting edge of writing analysis tools, considering not only the writing process itself, but also the cognitive process behind it. The fourth section, Writing in Online Educational Environments, deals with environments intended to foster pedagogical goals, and the last section, Social and Philosophical Aspects of Writing and New Media, faces up to an important issue in the digital era: the digital divide. This is not simply about economic resources. Instead, it is seen as a combination of social, linguistic and economic factors: how digital resources are used in schools or at home, if they are available, how economic conditions interact with language use, and finally under‐representation of non‐English languages among internet resources.

Case studies among American students have shown that the digital divide plays a crucial role in the different academic achievements of children. That is why the authors emphasise the urgent need to pay more attention to factors shoring up or detracting from people's acquisition of digital literacy and on new models of digital education.

Taken together, these five sections demonstrate the relevance of digital media on cognitive aspects of writing processes and give a comprehensive review of the state of art in the field. The book, with its wide‐ranging international authorship, is a valuable instrument to anyone concerned with the fundamental processes of writing and learning to write.