Toward Spatial Justice: Rural Youth Accessing the Internet With Mobile Phones

• In Event: 70.067 - Poster Session 15
  In Poster Session: 70.067-2 - Literacy: Cognitive and Affective Factors

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the spatial qualities of the literacy practices of three participants who composed digital texts with mobile phones. Focal participants were rurally-located teens who used Internet-equipped phones to access the Internet. Although they had powerful tools (smartphones at home and iPads at school) they used them in limiting ways because of the lack of supports that might allow them to tap in to global flows and render (rather than recirculate) texts. These findings can contribute to conversations that probe digital divide rhetoric to work for true social (and spatial) justice.

Author

• Julie Warner, United States Department of Education