Interactivity and the Invisible: What Counts as Writing in the Age of Web 2.0

This study asks: what counts as writing in a Web 2.0 environment? How do the vocabularies, functionalities, and organizing structures of Web 2.0 environments impact our understanding of what writing is in these spaces and how that writing is performed? Results suggest that we, as scholars and teachers, need to pay more attention to, first, the interactivity that is embedded in and afforded by Web 2.0 applications and, second, the processes that are invisible to the composer. Successful compositional engagement with Web 2.0 applications requires an evolving interactive set of practices similar to those practiced by gamers, comics, and electronic literature authors and readers. What we learn about these practices has the potential to transform the way we understand writing and the teaching of writing within and outside of a Web 2.0 ecosystem.