Short-form Writing: Studying Process in the Context of Contemporary Composing Technologies

Abstract In this article, I argue that writing studies scholarship has little understanding of what happens when writers compose the short-form, networked writing which is increasingly prevalent across the culture. Situated within the existing broad disciplinary understanding of writing and technology as cultural practices with literacy, data-based pictures of what writers are doing in situ with contemporary writing technologies provide an additional necessary layer of understanding to the ways writing technologies intersect with and impact what writers do with language. I argue that as a field we should also pay close, systematic attention to writers’ writing processes, in particular, developing an understanding of writers composing with short-form, interactive writing. I build these arguments through analysis of examples drawn from a study of eight Facebook writers’ composing processes captured in think-aloud screencast videos.