Overview: Investigating Third Age internet research
Dominant themes
Box 1 summarizes the six major themes that emerged from our analysis of this new corpus, and which we feel most meaningfully reflect the actual preoccupations of scholars in this field from 2003 to 2023. Each major theme brings together several related minor themes that we identified in the literature. We also noted that these themes map well to topics identified independently from abstracts, giving us confidence in the reliability of our overall thematic analysis. Original counts of number of studies per theme or sub-theme as of April 2025 (and before user submissions of additional studies) are given in brackets.
Box 1. Major themes in the 2003-2023 literature
Theme 1: Theoretical and methodological foundations (101)
- Journalism (9)
- Media studies (19)
- Theory, terminology, definitions, methodologies (63)
Theme 2: Digital cultures as social and cultural constructs (124)
- Digital culture(s) (32)
- Identity and belonging (54)
- Social and community dynamics (67)
Theme 3: Language and expression in digital spaces (105)
- Creative cultural expression and innovation (26)
- Intercultural communication practices (31)
- Multilingualism and translingualism (17)
- Multimodal communication in digital spaces (45)
Theme 4: Education and learning (111)
- Intercultural and cross-cultural learning (61)
- Intercultural communication in digital learning spaces (44)
- Language and literacy education (38)
- Media and digital literacies (15)
- Social-emotional learning and well-being (15)
Theme 5: Power, ethics, and global perspectives (111)
- Globalization, power and digital culture (53)
- Intercultural digital ethics (14)
- Sociocultural and political impacts (59)
Theme 6: Digital infrastructures and design (48)
- Design for cultural and linguistic diversity (8)
- Localization of digital technologies (17)
- Technical and infrastructural challenges (18)
Descriptive language and terminology have shifted, and we discuss this throughout. Areas of emphasis have altered. For example, we observed that debates around digital culture and the impacts of digital technologies are much less polarized, and that fewer writers are focussed on presenting utopian or dystopian predictions and arguments. Moving away from discussing the novelty of virtual life, work from these decades clearly understands digital technologies as woven into everyday life in many different settings.
Shared meanings, practices, and values that arise around digital technologies and online life.
