THE ONLINE LIFE OF LITERACY EDUCATION: HOW THE 2018 #PHONICSDEBATE IS RESHAPING THE FIELD

Resumen

This paper provides an overview of the Reading Wars as a site of discursive struggle. Using a Bourdieu (1993) facilitated digital sociology, this paper will present a case study of the 2018 hashtag #PhonicsDebate to illustrate how literacy researchers and cognitive scientists used social media as a space to navigate, negotiate and reimagine the contours of the field of literacy. Using a digital sociological account of online events associated with the 2018 Phonics Debate hosted by the Australian Centre for Educational Research and the think tank the Centre for Independent Studies, this paper works to illuminate and challenge contemporary understanding of the politics online. If policy researchers are to clarify the relationship between politics and their field in the 21st century we must understand how boundaries are negotiated using digital tools and how fields are imagined.