Digital Methods in Literacy Research | This course comprises an overview of the application of digital technology in and as literacy research, while considering possible future directions for methods of data collection and analysis, representation, and knowledge mobilization. We look at how automation of literacy practices compels literacy researchers to adopt new research sites and approaches to findings and their relevance for the future of language and literacy education. Globally, reading and writing practices have shifted in response to new devices and genres of expression, from emoticons and memes to collaborative composition and rapid distribution, and hot topic concerns involving privacy, copyright, identity, ethics and politics. Bridging between qualitative data, natural language processing and other algorithmic processes, a re-envisioning of literacy research is long overdue. Among the topics covered are using voice recognition, automated translation, optical character recognition, online forums, social media and streaming data sources, big data, open data and pre-existing software packages, libraries and databases, data visualization and sonification, data performance, multimedia and arts-based inquiry using digital tools. In each of these areas we will explore digital ethics, anonymity and the means by which information is translated and transmediated into code or scalable values, and how lexicogrammatical topographies of meaning might be crystalized as findings through these processes.