Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Online Gaming As Sociable Media, Steven L. Thorne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over much of the world, contemporary communicative practices are mediated by a wide range of digital technologies that support speech, image, video, and of course textual literacies. In dialectic tension with the rapid growth in digital information and communication media, Internet information and communication technologies have amplified conventional communicative practices in terms of breadth, impact and speed and have also enabled the emergence of new communicative, cultural and cognitive practices. These practices form dynamic cultures-of-use - that is, communication tools and the human activities they mediate co-evolve (Thorne, 2003). This article begins with a review of contradictory appraisals of digital …