Ubiquitous Writing, Technologies, and the Social Practice of Literacies of Coordination

Abstract

This article shares results from a multi-institutional study of the role of writing in college students' lives. Using case studies built from a larger population survey along with interviews, diaries, and a daily SMS texting protocol, we found that students report SMS texting, lecture notes, and emails to be the most frequent writing practices in college student experience and that these writing practices are often highly valued by students as well. Our data suggest that college students position these pervasive and important writing practices as coordinative acts that create social alignment. Writing to coordinate people and things is more than an instrumental practice: through this activity, college students not only operate within established social collectives that shape literacy but also actively participate in building relationships that support them. In this regard, our study of writing as it functions in everyday use helps us understand contemporary forms of social interaction.

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Written Communication
2014, Vol. 31(1) 91 –117
© 2013 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0741088313514023
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Article
Ubiquitous Writing,
Technologies, and
the Social Practice
of Literacies of
Coordination
Stacey Pigg1, Jeffrey T. Grabill2,
Beth Brunk-Chavez3, Jessie L. Moore4,
Paula Rosinski4, and Paul G. Curran5
Abstract
This article shares results from a multi-institutional study of the role of writing
in college students’ lives. Using case studies built from a larger population
survey along with interviews, diaries, and a daily SMS texting protocol, we
found that students report SMS texting, lecture notes, and emails to be the
most frequent writing practices in college student experience and that these
writing practices are often highly valued by students as well. Our data suggest
that college students position these pervasive and important writing practices
as coordinative acts that create social alignment. Writing to coordinate
people and things is more than an instrumental practice: through this activity,
college students not only operate within established social collectives that
shape literacy but also actively participate in building relationships that
support them. In this regard, our study of writing as it functions in everyday
use helps us understand contemporary forms of social interaction.
Keywords
texting, SMS, college students’ writing, everyday writing, frequent writing,
social practice, literacy practice, social interaction
1University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
2Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
3University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA
4Elon University, Elon, NC, USA
5Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, USA
Corresponding Author:
Stacey Pigg, University of Central Florida, PO Box 161345, Orlando, FL 32816, USA.
Email: stacey.pigg@ucf.edu
514023WCX31110.1177/0741088313514023Written CommunicationPigg et al.
research-article2013
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92 Written Communication 31(1)
Outlining a research agenda for texts mediated by information technologies,
the IText Working Group (Geisler et al., 2001) advocated for research that ana-
lyzes how digital texts function and shift the practices of everyday life.
According to the authors, literacy historians emphasize how particular “junc-
tures in human history” highlight “the intricate relation between technology
and literacy” (p. 275). The historical moments that accompany communicative
innovations “from writing, to printing press, to telegraph, to computers and the
Internet” illuminate changing relationships between writers and readers, shift-
ing contexts for literate acts (i.e., which forms of mediated text are appropriate
in a given situation), and new understandings of time and space relationships
(i.e., potential for overcoming distance or maintaining messages over time; p.
275). The IText Working Group highlights an important line of reasoning in
literacy studies that claims that to study writing as it functions in everyday use
is fundamental to understanding contemporary forms of social interaction.
Our current research is designed to contribute to this theoretical project to
explore relationships between literacy and technology and to attend to the
dynamic relationships between literacy and social practice. The Pew Research
Center (Madden, Lenhart, Duggan, Cortesi, & Gasser, 2013) has recently
reported that 78% of teens have cell phones and 47% of them own smart-
phones. This report followed similar Pew research (Duggan & Rainie, 2012)
that showed that 85% of American adults own cell phones and use them fre-
quently for both inscription and information-seeking activities (e.g., 82% for
taking photos, 80% for texting, 56% for accessing the Internet, and 50% for
emailing). As communicative devices, smartphones are remarkably agile and
mobile writing technologies that provide users with the ability to leverage the
speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity afforded by computer networks
(Gurak, 2001). It is no wonder, then, that we see an increasing amount of
scholarship focusing on writing as a spatially and temporally enduring pres-
ence across lifespheres (Yancey, 2009) or concerned with new forms of ver-
nacular literacies (Buck, 2012; Gee, 2003; Haas & Takayoshi, 2011;
Lankshear & Knobel, 2008; Roozen, 2009) and, in the case of the new Pew
report, on the rhetorical complexity of our social lives as they have become
increasingly mediated by writing technologies.
The study reported here was motivated by these issues and embedded in
the working lives of this research team, which included people focused on
researching writing at the university as well as writing in professional con-
texts. We began with simple descriptive questions such as these: What are
today’s college students writing? What kinds of writing do they value? Such
descriptive questions are useful for framing research that concretely (yet tem-
porarily) grounds an understanding of writing’s everyday emerging forms
and values during times when shifts in communication technologies can be
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Pigg et al. 93
felt strongly, such as the present moment. With technologies, literate con-
texts, and social practices coevolving, “snapshots” of how writing is under-
stood and valued are necessary to assist in the theoretical and practical work
of writing research, pedagogy, and theory (i.e., curriculum design, method-
ological innovation).
In this article, we detail and present findings from research aimed at articulat-
ing students’ experiences of and with writing today. After describing our data
collection in survey, diaries, and interviews, we report how SMS texts, emails,
lecture notes, and academic papers are understood to be frequent and valued
writing practices. Following these results, we analyze how writing functions and
is valued as coordination, a practice that is rather mundane but that we argue has
cultural, technological, and literate significance in managing day-to-day lives.
We examine how three study participants use short-form writing to orchestrate
their social/personal lives and academic productivity. As we will discuss, the
idea that texts generally “coordinate” goal-directed activities is well documented
in writing studies (see Bazerman, 2008) and in literatures on computer-sup-
ported collaborative work (e.g., Bodker & Christiansen, 2006; Schmidt &
Wagner, 2004). However, we describe a less routinized view of coordination as
a written communication practice that organizes college students’ personal, pro-
fessional, and academic memory, sociability, and planning. This coordination is
located in writing that is enabled by the ubiquity of computer networks and
handheld computing devices and has implications for sustaining relationships
and maintaining productivity. Through small, mundane practices of coordina-
tion, individuals operate within and shape established “ecological” systems that
shape literacy practice. By “practice,” then, we refer not simply to literacy acts
but to more general cultural practices associated with writing (see Barton, 1994),
and we argue that our project makes a useful contribution to how we understand
the relationships between literacy and social practice, to understanding writing
as a social practice. Through these writing practices, we see college students
actively participating in creating literacy ecologies. Writing—as an act, a verb—
shapes contemporary social and personal lives.
Technology and Writing in Everyday Life
Writing technologies and the cultural changes associated with their adoption
are important to the dynamic we describe in this article. Literacy scholars
have long argued for ways to socially situate how we understand literacies,
which was one of the first impulses of what became known as the new liter-
acy studies (e.g., Barton, 1994; Street, 1984). In an effort to counter the per-
sistence of so-called autonomous (Street, 1984) notions of literacy that
located consequences and agency either in literacy as a cognitive skill or in
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94 Written Communication 31(1)
broader historical narratives such as the invention of writing or technological
systems, literacy scholars have developed theoretical frameworks that
emphasize contextual connections among social systems, values, and discrete
practices, such as Barton’s “ecological” framework, which informs our work
in this study (for more on this framework and its use, see Barton, 1994;
Barton & Hamilton, 1998; for composition, see Cooper, 1986; Grabill, 2001).
Technologies are always central to the ecological contexts that frame lit-
eracy, although perhaps not as visibly as necessary in examinations of liter-
acy and social practice. Our project is intended to help strengthen the
conceptual connections among literacy, technology, and social practice by
exploring how developments in writing technologies have effects on every-
day writing practices. Mobile phones, for example, are shaping everyday lit-
eracy practices in ways similar to those the IText group referenced.1 In order
to understand the impact of this technology on literacy, researchers must take
into account multiple layers of context including their functionality, their
ideological meaning, and their local use. By nature of their functionality,
Katz and Aakhus (2002) have suggested that mobile phones merge commu-
nication media previously separated (pp. 3-4). Fortunati (2002) has argued
that this convergence, along with the continual access afforded by these
devices, corresponds with organizational and economic transformations that
affect social and professional productivity (see Harvey, 1990). While embed-
ded in and constructing these ideologies, mobile phones are simultaneously
subject to local, situated norms of use (Ito & Okabe, 2005). Cultures of local
domains in which individuals use a given technology (i.e., home, schools,
workplaces) shape and even create the need for forms of communication a
given technology affords (Nardi & O’Day, 1999).
It is within this set of contexts—that of a given technology’s functionality,
of its embeddedness in ideologies, and its situated, contextual use—that we
might begin to understand the changes that a technology like a mobile phone
can enact on literate practice. In addition to these concerns at the scale of
culture or social system, a given individual’s experience is shaped by how he
or she has accessed technologies, practiced literacies, and been affected by
many contextual associations (e.g., race, geography, family, values; see
Hawisher, Selfe, Moraski, & Pearson, 2004). One contribution of this article
is to argue that individuals’ understandings and values attached to literacy
offer explanatory power for researchers attempting to gain perspective on
how emerging technologies affect literacy and social practices, particularly
(in our case) at a moment of technological change. This is particularly impor-
tant in the case of literacy that takes place on screens of computers and mobile
phones because they bring together multiple literacy domains, practices,
events, and genres—many of which are rather ephemeral. This study was
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Pigg et al. 95
concerned with mapping how college students experience the current terrain
of writing practices, given recent ubiquity of cell phones as writing devices.
Grounding our study in this way allowed us to map participants’ understand-
ings of what they write and how they value it in ways that maintained a com-
mitment to situating and accounting for local contextual factors of use,
including purpose, location, and interactions that shape their practice.
Method
Research Questions
Given our commitment to the understandings and values that shape college
students’ writing experiences, the study focused on a set of issues that led to
a three-phase descriptive case study design. Our interests in what college
students were writing, why, and what they valued about that writing led us to
ask the following questions in this study:
1. What kinds of writing do students understand themselves to practice
most frequently?
2. What writing practices do students value and why?
3. How do students understand their most frequent and valued writing
practices to function within the broader contexts of their goals, roles,
and interests?
The role writing plays in student experience is closely connected to both
value and frequency, or how often a given form of writing is present in their
daily lives, and thus we focus on the intersection of the two in our design and
findings.
Recruitment and Data Collection Method
In our recruitment of participants, we sought to identify students interested in
the research subject matter who would therefore have the motivation to
engage in the study process. We hoped seeking motivated students would
allow us to solve the historical problem we have had recruiting participants
from writing classrooms (i.e., high initial interest but high “mortality” with
regard to persistence and compliance). Our approach, therefore, was to recruit
students who fit our profile (enrolled in a writing class) but who also had an
interest in the subject matter of the research.2
Our data collection process had three phases. We began our data collection
with a survey instrument developed in a prior study (Revisualizing Composition
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96 Written Communication 31(1)
Study Group, 2010).3 The survey presented participants with a list of writing
practices ranging from lists to research papers to texting to multimedia com-
positions. From this list, participants ranked their five most frequent writing
practices. Next, they ranked the five types of writing that they valued the most.
For each type of writing either most frequent or valued, participants were
asked to detail why, where, with whom, for whom, and with what technologies
they typically write in order to account for contexts associated with these prac-
tices. We administered the survey to a group of 65 students who contacted us
with interest in the project. Survey results from these participants provided
baseline data about their writing lives and allowed us to gauge the extent to
which our participants fit the population and results of the our prior survey
study, which represented a much larger population.
Next, we asked survey participants to take part in a weeklong diary study in
which we prompted them to share what they were writing at specific times during
each day. Given the challenges of retrospective self-reporting (Tomlinson, 1984),
we conceived of this diary as a memory prompt that would provide participants
with specific acts of writing on which to reflect during later interviews (Hart-
Davidson, 2007). In order to facilitate that process across several days of data
collection, we developed a system that sent SMS text messages to students via
their phones at programmed intervals (9 a.m., 12 noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9 p.m.
daily during the collection period). These texts prompted participants to respond
(also via SMS text message) by telling us what they were writing at the time that
they received the text or immediately prior to receiving the text. The final prompt
of the day directed participants to an online diary form where they could look
back over their responses for the day. In order to further stimulate memory, the
diary form prompted participants to provide additional detailed information
about three specific writing acts from that day that indicated information about
local contexts in which the writing was conducted (i.e., audience, purpose, place,
collaborators, technologies used). The third and final phase of data collection
entailed interviews that explored questions of writing frequency and value tai-
lored to each participant based on survey and diary results. Our goal with the
interviews was to prompt students to share more about how their most frequent
and valued forms of writing connected to their individual goals and interests, as
well as to illuminate the local contexts in which this writing participated and cir-
culated (see the appendix for sample interview questions).
Case Selection
We focused on cases to retain and illustrate local contexts for writing, while
constructing holistic descriptions of how it was made meaningful (Yin,
2009). Cases enabled us to attend to variables introduced by multiple layers
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Pigg et al. 97
of context. Because case studies focus on detail, context, and even affect,
Mary Sue MacNealy (1997) suggested selecting cases for reporting because
they are (a) unique or (b) representative (p. 183). Such advice is typical, and
in our study choosing “representative” cases was important given our ques-
tions and our interest in exploring in more detail dynamics that were present
in our survey. Our case selection process, therefore, identified both complete
and representative participants. Of the 65 students who completed the survey,
50 participated in the diary texting protocol. Not all students participated
consistently, and so given the variation and incompleteness in the data collec-
tion, we made decisions about what constituted a “complete” case of students
to interview. We selected 10 students who represented a completed collection
of data, which included a survey, a minimum of three quality days of diary
data, and an hour-long interview (see Table 1; all names are pseudonyms).
This group included at least one case from every participating institution. For
these students, we analyzed three weekdays of diaries,4 as well as the inter-
views. Of these 10 cases, we eliminated one graduate student participant
from this analysis because of the marked differences in experiences.5
The resulting nine cases that form the core of our analysis are diverse with
respect to race (five declared a non-White racial status) but are almost
Table 1. The Nine Case Participants.
Alicia Accounting major at a very-high-activity research university. Works
as a crew lead at an on-campus dining facility.
Hannah First-year student considering a political science major at a private
master’s university. Works part-time in a movie theater.
Janine First-year international studies major at a private master’s university.
Works as a counselor at a mission camp during the summer.
Lauren First-year physics and creative writing double major at a private
master’s university. Active student representative on residence life
committees.
Marisa Student at a high-activity research university and a community
college. Volunteers for a well-known nonprofit foundation, focusing
on “Teens for the Cure.”
Michael History major at a high-activity research university. Active in game
chatrooms.
Sarah First-year student at a private master’s university. Member of the
university dance team for athletic events.
Stephanie First-year psychology major at a private master’s university. Works at
a summer Spanish immersion camp.
Tina Social work major at a very-high-activity research university. Sings in
a band as a hobby and works as a waitress.
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98 Written Communication 31(1)
exclusively women (8 female, 1 male). As we will discuss, it is important to
keep in mind that these demographic factors influence our findings, given
research that has suggested women use online tools more often than men for
communication and enriching relationships (Fallows, 2005). The participants
of our survey and cases generally fit the age and educational status profile of
students who took our Phase 1 survey in which 90% of the participants were
a “traditional” age for U.S. institutions of higher education (18-23).
Data Analysis
Our process yielded descriptive data that were amenable to both quantitative
and qualitative analysis. We analyzed survey data by figuring descriptive
frequencies for demographics, writing done most often, and writing most
valued. Next, we compared those results to those of our prior larger popula-
tion survey study (Revisualizing Composition Study Group, 2010). In addi-
tion, we coded instances of writing recorded in the diaries and discourse
recorded in the interviews for the nine cases. Our first, “open” pass through
the data was informed by the survey analysis and yielded three categories of
codes: purposes of writing, functions of writing, and values of writing.6 Our
second analytical move looked for relationships among the codes for func-
tions, purposes, and values by attending to frequency and placing purposes,
functions, and values in relation to each other to determine if they clustered
or grouped in any way, paying particular attention to codes with greater fre-
quencies. This work yielded, for example, “coordination” and “transac-
tional” as emergent categories that described several of the individual codes
we had previously assigned (both highly relevant to this article). Our final
analytical move was to generate a set of statements that we took back to the
data to see how the narratives implied by those statements held up. Those
statements took the form of short claims such as “writing functions as social
glue” and “writing is valuable as preparation for life.” We used these state-
ments for a final, more narrative pass through the data to establish data-
driven story lines.
Findings
The analysis reported here focuses first on the writing practices that emerged
as most frequent and valued from the survey. Focusing in particular on those
practices, we turn to a story of how students understand writing to function
as “coordination” and what values are associated with that function. Our
analysis suggests that writing to maintain interpersonal connections (e.g.,
“social glue”) is frequent, highly valued, and almost always associated with
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Pigg et al. 99
digital technologies. Writing to coordinate “things” such as events or one’s
personal memory is mediated by many technologies (i.e., phones but also
nondigital mobile technologies like pen and paper) and is both frequent and
valued. The arguments we make about the importance of “coordination”
reflect our efforts to understand the most dominant student writing practices
that emerged through our study in a context that is attentive to data and
meaningful with regard to the experiences our participants shared by way of
survey responses, diaries, and interviews. The data reported in the remainder
of the article are consistent with these intentions. As we argue below, analyz-
ing participants’ understandings and values related to literacy provides one
means for better understanding the role of technologies as participants in
larger literacy (social) practices. This approach, furthermore, provides the
opportunity to understand cross-domain practices that are supported by digi-
tal technologies, such as the rhetorical work that we call “coordination.”
These practices are largely invisible and deserve attention as a category of
student writing and cultural work, not only because of their frequency but
also because they are best understood as a form of social practice with cul-
tural significance.
The Writing Students Practiced Most Frequently
The 65 students who participated in our survey pointed to three kinds of writ-
ing—SMS texts, emails, and lecture notes—as the most frequently practiced
writing of college life.7 We arrived at this conclusion through a weighted
ranking process: specifically, each instance in which a practice was assigned
as the most frequent scored 5 points, the second most frequent practice scored
4 points, the third most frequent scored 3 points, the fourth most frequent
scored 2 points, and the fifth most frequent scored 1 point. This weighted
ranking allowed for us to account not only for how often a writing practice
was listed in a participant’s top five choices but also for what ranked position
that practice was assigned from most often used to fifth most often used. We
were not surprised that our participants described texting, emails, and lecture
notes as their three most frequent written communication practices because
these results aligned precisely with the findings of our prior survey of 1,366
students. Also consistent with the findings from our prior study, texting
emerged as a particularly important writing practice among our sample, more
prominent than other kinds of writing we might have assumed to be parallel
(e.g., social media status messages or instant messages). In our prior survey,
78% of participants said that texting was one of the five kinds of writing they
did most often and nearly half (46%) also ranked texting as their most fre-
quent writing practice. Texting was even more dominant among students in
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100 Written Communication 31(1)
this phase of research.8 Of the students in our survey, 90% indicated texting
was one of their five most frequent writing practices and 76% ranked it as
their most frequent writing practice.
From the standpoint of frequency, the prevalence of SMS texting provided
evidence that the mobile phone is not only an important writing device, but
perhaps the dominant writing technology for most students, a finding further
supported by data showing that students used their phones for emails, status
updates, instant messaging, lists, and even academic writing like lecture
notes, reading notes, essays, and research papers. Based on the prevalence of
the phone as a writing technology, it is hardly surprising that students say
they write for personal fulfillment nearly as often as for school assignments,
nor is it surprising that digital writing platforms easily accessible on phones—
such as Facebook and email—are frequently associated with the forms of
writing done most often. As we will discuss in more detail below, these fre-
quent self-supported and self-driven practices often function for interper-
sonal connecting; however, many also support academic activities as well
(e.g., signing up for classes, emailing advisors, and so forth).
The Writing Practices That Students Valued Most
While texting was an especially dominant writing practice for students in
terms of frequency, the results regarding value were more complicated.
Participants indicated that texting and academic papers were the two most
valued forms of writing in their lives. Again, this finding aligned precisely
with results from our prior survey. Their third most valued form of writing
was email, which ranked fourth in our prior study behind lecture notes. While
texting was the most highly valued form of writing, its value was not as
dominant as its frequency. Of participants, 70% still ranked it as one of their
top five most valued forms of writing and 34% said it was the writing practice
they valued more than any other. Academic papers garnered the next highest
response after text messages, with 15% of participants choosing it as their
most valued writing practice. Notable across both instances of our survey
was the relatively low value participants assigned to digital writing practices
associated with social networking compared with the value they associated
with texting and email. Using our ranking system, status message updates
ranked 22nd out of the 30 practices, and comments on status messages or
posts ranked 16th of 30. This finding is consistent with findings from our
larger population study.
While it might seem surprising that two writing practices so dissimilar—
texting and academic writing—would surface as the most valued forms of
writing, interviews and diary collection helped us understand a connection
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Pigg et al. 101
between them. Both represent a form of transactional value for students, a
term we use to describe the value placed on what can be derived in exchange
for an act or a product of writing. For instance, students frequently told us
that academic papers were valuable because by doing well they could earn
good grades. Students understood good grades as a building block to success
in their lives. While grades were a common way participants described the
transactional value of academic writing, the value assigned to texting was a
bit different. Students frequently described “maintaining connections” as an
explicit value of SMS texting. In a sense, transactional value described what
made interpersonal writing like texting valuable: It enabled participants to
maintain a connection with someone with whom they had a relationship.
Thus, our discussions with participants during interviews helped us under-
stand that it was not generally the text as a product that was most valuable to
students, but instead what they derived from the act of writing it. The verb
(texting) was much more important than the noun (the text) because these
acts of writing maintained relationships or feelings of connectedness with
people important to them. Texting also corresponded with other values in our
coding that academic writing usually did not: efficiency/speed and entertain-
ment. Transactional value reveals one way that academic writing and short-
form digital writing share a relationship for college writers: The practice of
participating in these forms of writing accomplishes real-world, pragmatic
benefits extending beyond what the individual text composed might mean as
an isolated product.
Table 2 shares short explanations from students’ end-of-day diary writing
that describe how participants valued texting and academic writing. These
general results, however, still leave us with questions better addressed for
particular students in local social, cultural, and geographical contexts. How
did particular students understand these writing practices to function in the
context of their everyday lives? What did they enable or afford?
Writing as Coordination Across Three Cases
In order to more fully understand these frequent and valued writing prac-
tices, we have chosen to focus the remainder of our results discussion on
one function of writing prevalent both with regard to frequency and value
and associated with the transactional value that we have just described. We
call this function “coordination.” To explain what we mean by coordina-
tion, we draw on the use of the term in disciplinary and organizational writ-
ing to refer to the role texts play in bringing people and organizations into
alignment (see Bazerman, 2008; Swarts, 2008). We also build on a defini-
tion of coordination offered in recent scholarship on the cultural and social
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102 Written Communication 31(1)
impact of SMS communication. Ling and Yttri’s (2002) concepts of “micro-
coordination” and “hyper-coordination,” for example, are useful to describe
functions of integration our participants described when contextualizing
SMS and other short-form digital writing. By micro-coordination, Ling and
Yttri emphasize the instrumental ways writing brings together individuals
through the ongoing act of making arrangements (i.e., scheduling meetings)
that are rarely set in stone and adjusted continually as allowed by the con-
tact of mobile media (p. 140). Hyper-coordination includes this instrumen-
tal work but enhances it, as keeping ongoing connections not only
Table 2. Forms of Transactional Value in Two Highly Valued Writing Practices.
Writing practice Participants’ short explanations of value from diary collection
Texting Reminds me about stuff.
Just friends.
Way of communicating with distant friends.
It’s a way to communicate with people who are distant.
I do not get to communicate with my dad often so I value
every opportunity I have to talk with him.
It is important to talk to people back home.
Communicate with people back home.
To stay in communication with friends and family and to keep
plans.
Helps me communicate with friends.
It’s a necessary means of communication.
Text messaging is my way of communicating and keeping in
touch with people around campus and my family at home.
Though I think personal interaction is still stronger, this type
of writing ranks high for its value in not losing touch.
It is a means of communication and quick connection across
campus/to home.
Academic writing Finals grade.
I feel strongly about how well I do in this class.
I have to do it. It’s for a grade.
It’s my job.
Sometimes, academic essays feel contrived, but the
importance of arguing a point with support is valuable in
many disciplines.
I believe responding to what I have been required to read
helps me think more critically about the subject.
It is turned in for a grade, therefore it is important to
complete with accuracy.
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Pigg et al. 103
encourages planning discrete events but also grounds social group forma-
tion. For Ling and Yttri, who analyzed text messaging in a Norwegian con-
text, the ongoing expressive, discursive exchange of texting created and
reinforced social norms, including appropriate ways of communicating and
presenting oneself within a peer group. Hyper-coordination resonates as
well with Habuchi’s (2005) concept of the “tele-cocoon” in Japanese youth
culture, which described how youth used text messaging to maintain tight-
knit social groups.
We believe that “micro-coordination” is descriptive of what we see in our
data and may extend beyond texting and into other short digital forms of
writing. In addition, our participants led us to believe that the more expres-
sive and integrated “hyper-coordination” is taking place not only among
geographically colocated peer groups as described by Ling and Yttri and
Habuchi but also among spatially distributed peer groups and even across
generations in family units. In order to explore this intersection in the writ-
ing lives of our participants, we turn to narrative fragments derived from
interviews in three cases of students of the same gender but who have differ-
ent races/ethnicities and live in different geographic locations. As we have
noted, it is important to acknowledge that female Internet users have histori-
cally been associated with higher uses of digital tools to maintain relation-
ships. We also understand that in relying on participant perceptions of their
own practices, we are relying on self-report. However, in this case, we
understand students’ perceptions of their own activity to be a particularly
meaningful way to begin to understand the value of writing practices they
engage in frequently.
Sarah. First-year student Sarah’s survey responses for writing frequency
aligned with the findings from the entire sample. This traditionally aged stu-
dent (born in 1993) told us that she texted, kept lecture notes, and wrote
emails more than any other forms of writing. An example day in her diary
included text messages and notes for two different classes, which we used as
a prompt in her interviews to learn more about these practices:
9:49 a.m.: a text message
12:10 p.m.: biology notes, things to remember in my planner, and text
messages
3:10 p.m.: lab notes
5:16 p.m.: text message
Sarah told us that texting was important for “connect[ing] with people that
aren’t here.” She initially told us that she texted three groups primarily:
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104 Written Communication 31(1)
“friends from back home, my boyfriend, and my family,” all of whom were
disconnected from her geographically. “Um, family it’s just catching up, and
friends from back home same thing. And my boyfriend I text all day . . . about
what he’s doing and plans for when we’re gonna see each other.” When we
asked Sarah explicitly about the value of these practices, she mentioned how
texting enabled her to overcome geographic separation:
Since I don’t have a car I can’t just go and see people and friends from high school
or anything. People that went all over the United States, I can’t just go and see
them. So it’s easier to keep up with them over text messaging. I think that’s
important to keep that connection for people that are far away from me, and keep
those relationships.
She emphasized that her boyfriend “goes to another school . . . about an hour
away” so texting was a necessary way to close the gap of physical distance
she found between herself and those closest to her before she left for college.
These texts were not only the short jokes or acknowledgments that have been
documented in prior SMS scholarship but also “pretty substantial conversa-
tions” like with her sister about choosing colleges and making decisions
about internships. She noted that these texts often included links to other
information available on the web: “I’m trying to decide a major so my mom’s
been sending me stuff to look over for possible majors, so stuff like that.” She
positioned the value of this activity as related to its efficiency and ease. Sarah
described how sending a text is
easier than having to sit down and be on the phone with someone. It’s easier to just
text and be able to multitask when I have a lot of work to do. It’s easier than
talking, I guess, talking on the phone or doing any of that.
While texting allowed Sarah to keep in touch with those she was separated
from geographically, Sarah later added that she also texts her university
friends who live nearby, but for different reasons. As she put it, with “[univer-
sity] friends it’s planning.” Coordinating events like going out together or
seeing one another often happened through texting. When it came to the other
most frequent practice—lecture notes—Sarah described the role that writing
plays in her memory: “I can memorize things better when I write them.” She
reiterated,
The notes are for my memory and to be able to read back over them and then go
through the book and compare my notes. Usually my notes I’ll write something
that catches my attention so I’ll be able to remember it when I read back through
my notes.
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Pigg et al. 105
Marisa. Dually enrolled in a research university and a community college,
Marisa was a Mexican/Mexican American female born in 1991 who wrote
text messages, research papers, and emails most often. We focused on diary
entries such as the following as we tried to learn more about this writing she
did frequently:
11:00 a.m.: lecture notes
2:02 p.m.: notes for a meeting
4:01 p.m.: status update
7:00 p.m.: texting
Marisa, who routinely sends and receives more than 100 texts a day, stated
that even though she is texting “all the time,” she directs those texts to only
“about three people.” She understood this activity as natural, something that
everyone did: “Texting is just . . . it’s what life is now.” As with Sarah, part of
Marisa’s inner circle for texting was her family to whom she sent small jokes
and updates about her day. Describing her relationship with her parents, she
reflected, “Texting like brought us closer, I guess. Because, I don’t know,
they found it comfortable to text me funny jokes . . . and then a conversation
would build out of that.” In Marisa’s words, the speed of texting is what
makes it so valuable:
It’s a quick thing. You can do it really quick, you can be having a conversation with
someone or just like doing homework, you get a text, it takes like 20 seconds to do
a text, and you’re back at your homework.
She also described it as valuable because of its pervasiveness:
I value texting seeing as it’s always there. Note taking, I value it at that moment
because I was in that class. But once I get out of that class, I go on to the next class
and that class isn’t on my mind anymore. . . . Texting so . . . it’s an all day thing, so
I would value it more.
Like Sarah, Marisa micro-coordinated events, projects, and other activi-
ties through writing and particularly through texting. With her friends, she
used text messages “if we are going to meet somewhere.” Like Sarah, she
also frequently used writing as a memory device; however, Marisa typically
texted herself instead of writing things down. As she put it, “Sometimes I use
[texting] for like reminders. Like, I’m always texting so I’m bound to see a
message” for “appointments” or a reminder that “I have to call someone. Or
I’ll send an address to myself, like an email address and I’ll just write it
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106 Written Communication 31(1)
quickly on my phone and stuff.” Email, however, was a particularly impor-
tant practice for coordinating things like events or even her educational tra-
jectory. When coordinating schoolwork, such as connecting with classmates
for a group project, Marisa used email to plan, exchange information, and
determine when to meet. But she also emailed her academic advisors to plan.
Because she was enrolled at two colleges, she had to work through technicali-
ties, and thus frequently emailed her advisor to ask, “What classes can I take?
If I’m taking this class what class can I take next semester?” or “If I’m start-
ing these classes at [community college], what classes can I take at [univer-
sity]?” Marisa also emailed to ask instructors when assignments were due.
Similarly, she used email as part of her community work to get in touch with
supervisors and high school students she mentored as part of her volunteer
work with a large, national nonprofit organization: “In order for them to get
things done I have to check with other people and I have to write emails and
make sure it’s ok with other people.”
Alicia. Alicia, an African American female born in 1991, was an accounting
major at a research university. She told us that her writing done most often
was texting, journal/diary (i.e., an online journal composed on her phone),
and email. Her diary entries often looked like the following:
11:00 a.m.: texting a friend
2:00 p.m.: lecture notes for class
4:12 p.m.: lecture notes for class
7:05 p.m.: texting
Alicia was one of the most ambivalent voices with regard to texting in her life.
She told us that texting was important because it helped her keep in touch with
her family because that is the medium they use most frequently. However, she
personally did not enjoy texting: “Text messaging is good for my family. But
I swear I wish they could do something else. I really do.” Revealing a personal
detail, Alicia told us that texting is particularly important because of her
father’s health condition: “Like he’s in a hospital, he’s on bed rest like for
good, so he uses his phone. That’s how I communicate with my dad because
he has a tube down his throat. He can’t talk, so I talk to my dad [through tex-
ting].” For Alicia, a combination of her busy schedule and her family’s com-
munication needs made texting a primary medium for maintaining her
connection to them now that she was living a hour’s drive away. She also
valued texting because it allowed her to be available to her family and to her
work even when she needed to be doing other things: “Yeah, um . . . since I’m
in class so much and I’m at work so much, everyone texts me. They . . . my
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Pigg et al. 107
job, [café name] . . . I don’t know how they learned to text from their phones,
[laughs], but they text now.” She noted, though, that her brothers texted her
“nonstop” and she had even turned her phone over to her economics TA to
avoid being distracted by text messages during class time. She said she often
noticed students texting during class and thought, “You’ve only got 50 min-
utes in this class and you’ve been texting the whole time and then you wonder
why you don’t understand this or understand that. . . . It’s a very big
distraction.”
Notably, Alicia was much more interested in email, which she said she
used for important professional work like applying for internships because
“it’s all they do,” referring to potential employers. For that reason, she
explains, “emailing is way more important for me than text messaging or
Twitter or Facebook.” Some of Alicia’s later comments helped explain why
she sees texting and other shorter forms of writing associated with social
media as less important or valuable even than email:
I feel my job and my school, that’s my future. Like that’s what, that’s what I’m
gonna be dwelling on like within like 10 years from now, not my phone. Like
Twitter and Facebook, I might not even have it within like 10 years from now. So
I have to keep up with emails like I check my email all the time, I don’t care what
it is. So like emailing, doing stuff for my job, like that’s so important to me.
With her attention toward her future and not the social life of her present,
social media and text messaging offered less transactional value: “I can’t see
myself 25 pushing 30 still like on Facebook . . . I can’t see myself doing that
[laughs].” She understood writing as a way to take control over her own
learning process, to make her own connections. She said,
I am the type of person like I have to like if I constantly write it over and over
again, it’s gonna be stuck in my head. So that, like writing my notes and everything,
it helps me a lot. Instead of like being a person that gotta read the book all the time
and try to memorize, I have to write it, like I write it 24/7. I write it over and over
and over again until it’s stuck in my head.
Conclusion
With regard to short forms of writing and the powerful, handheld writing
technologies many of us carry around, what does it mean for a student to say
something like “texting is just . . . it’s what life is now”? The emerging
answers suggest that texting is connected to different forms of transactional
value that students equate with school and career success and with social
integration. With regard to social integration, it seems clear that relatively
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108 Written Communication 31(1)
mundane acts such as texting are part of a much more complex social practice
that supports and sustains roles that our participants play in their communi-
ties and that are meaningful to them. As Barton and others in the new literacy
studies have long argued, literacy practices are understood to be always
embedded in broader social practices. But beyond “embedded,” we would
argue that such practices—and here we would also insist on careful attention
to technologies—are social practices with cultural significance. With our
participants, text messages keep students connected to family members,
friends, and loved ones they left behind or don’t see as often as they transition
into new lives as college students. Texting’s coordinative function in particu-
lar is interesting not simply because of the sheer volume of this writing work
but because of the way that this practice directly shapes the local ecologies
within which college students practice literacy. Because of the affordances of
the technologies, “local” here refers to people distributed in space and time,
a literacy ecology dynamic not anticipated when the concept was originally
developed by literacy scholars in the early 1990s (and so at the birth of widely
available computer networks). Other practices, such as emails and self-spon-
sored academic texts like lecture notes provide similar avenues for coordinat-
ing and maintaining alignment with professional and academic communities.
However, changes in technologies, participants, and intentions endow these
practices with very different social and cultural meaning.
We therefore suggest that the practice of coordination is rhetorically,
socially, and culturally interesting and may prove significant. Looking across
these case studies, we find that coordination through short-form digital writ-
ing like text messaging is an important tool for social interaction. In addition,
our analysis suggests that written coordination not only aligns people into
social formations but also provides college students an active means for orga-
nizing “things” that matter to them within the contexts of the goals, identities,
and domains that are meaningful to them: projects, internships, information,
personal memory—even their own learning trajectories. From the perspec-
tive of the everyday practice of writing, micro-coordination is a more perva-
sive written activity than has previously been documented. It is also more
than simply functional or instrumental. By bringing people and things (like
events or projects) into alignment, coordination becomes a way for students
to actively participate and meaningfully direct their relationship to many of
the roles and identities that characterize their lives in college. While these
acts of writing are “small” in isolation, taken together they appear as an
expansive space for agency (and a quite substantial body of writing). These
persistent, pervasive literate acts are a way that students can create action in
small and large ways. While the students in our study most frequently associ-
ated this power with reaching personal and individual goals (i.e., staying in
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Pigg et al. 109
contact with people, working toward better grades), coordination has been
framed as foundational to large-scale civic and social interventions as well.
Keyani and Farnham (2005) gestured to this sense of coordination when
describing Swarm, a system they developed to create forms of ambient
awareness among groups, drawing on Rheingold’s (2002) conception of
“smart mobs.” In addition, the importance of short forms of communication
has recently come to the fore in moments of social upheaval (e.g., green revo-
lution) and at moments of disaster when social coordination can mean the
difference between life and death (Potts, 2013). However, the students we
interviewed did not describe coordination as a form of collective intelligence
directed toward broader social issues, which suggests an opportunity for fur-
ther writing research and pedagogy in this area.
Coordination is not without difficulties. We stress that when individuals
write across technological platforms and cultural domains (i.e., within peer
groups, within different university settings), even the personal micro-coordi-
nation that happens in everyday life may be a highly rhetorically complex
form of work for college students—one that also requires more attention
from writing researchers, theorists, and educators. Beaufort (2007) defined
the domain of rhetorical knowledge for college writers by how writers spec-
ify audiences and purposes for a text and then make decisions about how best
to communicate rhetorically in that instance, especially related to negotiating
material constraints like timing and relationships that exist within the com-
munities for whom they write (p. 20). SMS text messages by their nature
frequently cut across discourse communities and social domains. Making
successful contextual choices when writing for coordination means under-
standing the functionality of a particular medium, weighing its impact on
one’s own goals, and understanding its appropriateness for the audience and
particular communicative scene in which one might use it. These choices, as
we have discussed, happen against a backdrop of conflicting values and pres-
sures to maintain productivity.
For example, participants frequently positioned writing as merely transac-
tional, an efficient and yet almost invisible exchange that provides something
they need or want. However, in their discussions of texting and other forms
of writing, it is easy to identify how the expectation of reciprocity (Hoflich &
Gebhardt, 2005) that comes along with short-form communication makes
this form of writing an ongoing way of being. That is to say, students do not
typically just send one SMS text and then go on with their lives; the norm is
to continually reply to SMS texts (Laursen, 2005). Therefore, texting and the
interpersonal and identity work attached to it stretch temporally through
other activities rather than occupying a simple, differentiated space and time.
Thus, students like Alicia can find SMS texting to be a hindrance, especially
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110 Written Communication 31(1)
as it intersects with other kinds of writing that matter to her more. But even
as she finds it burdensome, she continues to practice it. Acts of micro-coordi-
nation have already reshaped everyday literacy practice for Alicia and many
college students like her. The literate practices of micro-coordination are part
of the fabric of writing in the lives of our students (and likely many others).
Some, like Alicia, found it burdensome. Others found it sustaining. But all of
our participants found it unavoidable, often “natural,” and clearly a common-
place way in which they engage the world.
Appendix
Interview Questions
Part 1: Opening Questions
First, we would like to ask you a few questions about whether and how writ-
ing is related to some of the things you do in your life as a college student—
things like taking courses, working, community life, and personal life.
1. How do you use writing in your life? What kinds of writing did you
do in your writing class this semester? What did you value about the
writing you did in this class—and why?
2. Do you write for other courses you are enrolled in? What kinds of
writing do you do in those classes? What did you value about the writ-
ing you did in these courses—and why?
3. Do you have a job? What kinds of writing do you do at your job?
What do you value about the writing you do at work—and why?
4. Do you participate in any community service work [note: if unsure
what this means, explain in terms of volunteer work for community,
political, or cause-based organizations]? What kinds of writing do
you do as part of your community work? What did you value about
the writing you did as part of this work—and why?
5. We noticed in the diaries that people report using some forms of writ-
ing to maintain connections to people. Do you write as a way to main-
tain or create connections with people? What kinds of writing? Why
are these forms of writing useful for connectivity?
Part 2: Case Study Specific
Now we will ask you a few questions that are related directly to what you told
us you were writing in the survey, texts, and diary entries.
[Specific questions here related to each case study and activities reported
in the diary and SMS protocols.]
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Pigg et al. 111
Part 3: Controversial Statement Prompts
From your survey, diary, and texts and those of other participants, we learned
interesting things about how you think about, value, and use different kinds of
writing. Based on what we learned, we’d like to ask you how you feel about a
few different statements related to writing. So for each statement, we will ask
whether you agree or disagree and then we will ask you why.
Section 1: Grades/transactional value
1. Writing for school is valuable to me because grades are valuable to
me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
2. Texting helps me get good grades, so it is valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
3. Writing allows me to do my job better.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
Section 2: Intrinsic value
1. A piece of writing that takes a lot of effort is valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
2. A piece of writing that takes a lot of time is valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
3. A piece of writing that lets me think through challenging subjects is
valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
4. A piece of writing that I feel is original is valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
5. Writing in academic/school settings (academic essays, research
papers, tests, etc.) is more difficult than writing for personal reasons
(diary, journal, texting, social media, etc.).
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
6. Writing that makes me feel happy is valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
Section 3: Social coordination and value
1. Writing that makes me feel more connected is valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
2. Texting helps me keep in touch with my family.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
3. Texting helps me keep in touch with my friends.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
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112 Written Communication 31(1)
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank the Michigan State University Center for Statistical Training
and Consulting for providing statistical support that made this research possible.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.
Notes
1. It is largely recognized that mobile, digital technologies have contributed to a
changed conception of space and time that leads people to be “always on” or “wired”
(Baron, 2008). It has also become commonplace to claim the pervasiveness of tech-
nology is leading young people to write more than ever. The spatial and temporal
pervasiveness of technology is a commonplace in scholarship and public discourse
(Aarts, Collier, van Loenen, & de Ruyter, 2003; Greenfield, 2006; Niebert, Schieder,
Zander, & Hancock, 2007; Weber, Rabaey, & Aarts, 2005). In the vernacular, the
idea that social media pervade everyday experience has become commonplace.
Section 4: Time, productivity, and value
1. Writing that I can complete quickly is valuable to me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
2. Facebook wastes important time that I could spend doing more valu-
able things.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
3. Texting wastes important time that I could spend doing more valuable
things.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
4. Academic writing wastes important time I could spend doing more
valuable things.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
5. Some writing that I spend a lot of time doing is not very valuable to
me.
Agree or disagree? Why? Give an example?
The End
Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. You can find out more
about the study online if you are interested.
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Pigg et al. 113
Thompson (2009), drawing on an interview with rhetoric and composition scholar
Andrea Lunsford, remarked that students are writing more than ever.
2. Undergraduate researchers designed our recruitment strategy in order to identify
motivated students enrolled in writing classes. The strategy focused on engag-
ing participants as they went about their day-to-day lives on campus through the
use of bulletin board flyers with information about the study and tear-off contact
information that enabled prospective participants to communicate their interest
with us. We posted these flyers in locations on campus that we believed would
attract the attention of students enrolled in a writing class. We also recruited
interested participants by emailing a project description and contact information
to select first-year writing classes.
3. In the prior survey, the instrument had been distributed to students enrolled in
a first-year writing class from April to June of the spring 2010 semester (N =
1,366). We constructed a purposive, stratified sample in an attempt to match the
demographic profile of U.S. college students (those enrolled in both 4-year and
2-year institutions in 2010). The survey asked participants to identify writing
practices in which they engage based on a list of 30 possible choices. We adapted
this list of writing practices from the instrument used by the Stanford Study of
Writing (n.d.). To their list, we added several practices that had emerged since
their study (i.e., social networking statuses and comments).
4. While we focused on weekday writing to capture the writing that happened when
classes were taking place, we did not look at the same three weekdays in each
case. Diary data from weekends were most incomplete and had the greatest vari-
ation across cases.
5. The graduate student was older, was working, and drew on those experiences
more fully than did other participants. The other nine were very much “students”
in terms of their identities and activities. The graduate student identified as a
professional. For us, the differences in the graduate student case point to how
distinct variables such as age, work, and cultural contexts can be.
6. Our initial codes for purposes aligned with those used in the survey: for school,
for social good, for entertainment, for personal fulfillment, and for work. Our
initial codes for functions included facilitating learning/school activities, facili-
tating success at work, maintaining interpersonal connections, maintaining
personal organization, communicating, having fun or entertainment, and main-
taining memory. Our initial value codes included a list that overlapped with
these functions, which suggested to us that many participants valued particular
writing practices because of their functionality. These codes included facilitating
learning/school activities, maintaining interpersonal connections, maintaining
personal organization, communicating, having fun or entertainment, and main-
taining memory. In addition, other value codes that differed from function codes
included personally meaningful (intrinsic value), challenging, frequent (i.e., val-
ued because it was done often), transactional, and easy/convenient.
7. One reviewer noted that our methodology flattens the difference between differ-
ent practices of writing (e.g., between something “short” like an SMS text mes-
sage and something more involved like an academic essay). This is a feature of
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114 Written Communication 31(1)
our approach. Our approach focuses on accounting for—from students’ perspec-
tives—what writing they do most often regardless of how involved or formal it
is. Our reviewer is also getting at issues of value. We agree that value is impor-
tant, and subsequent features of our approach allow us to ask questions about
value.
8. We should acknowledge the possibility that our methods, using SMS texting to
connect to students, may have attracted a student population for whom texting is
an especially frequent writing practice.
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Author Biographies
Stacey Pigg is an Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of
Central Florida. Her research analyzes the effects of networked technologies on how
we work, think, and learn.
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Pigg et al. 117
Jeffrey T. Grabill is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing, Rhetoric,
and American Cultures. He is also a senior researcher with Writing in Digital
Environments Research.
Beth Brunk-Chavez is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies and
Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso.
She served as WPA of the First-Year Composition program from 2008-2013.
Jessie L. Moore is Associate Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and associ-
ate professor of Professional Writing & Rhetoric at Elon University. Her recent
research focuses on writing transfer and on high-impact practices for engaged
learning.
Paula Rosinski is an Associate Professor of Professional Writing & Rhetoric and the
Writing Center Director at Elon University. Her recent research examines the transfer
of rhetorical knowledge and writing strategies between self-sponsored and academic
texts and reframing rhetorical theories and practices in multimodal environments.
Paul G. Curran is a Senior Research Analyst in institutional research and a Visiting
Assistant Professor of Psychology and Mathematics at Kenyon College.
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