Literacy Sponsorship of the “My Online Friends” Discussion Board: Competing and Complementary Relationships

• I examine the commercial and religious sponsors of a women's discussion board.
• Intersections among sponsors affected group and individual identity construction.
• Women changed commercial sponsors to allow for religious and relational literacies.
• Women adopted subject positions initially provided by commercial sponsors.
• Relationships among sponsors can motivate changes in online reading and writing.

This article argues that we need to consider the complementary and competing relationships among the multiple types of sponsors of digital literacies. As we explore not just what people are reading and writing online, but also what sponsors fuel their motivations for doing so, we will have a better understanding of the constraints that accompany specific digital literacy opportunities, as well as what motivates individuals or groups to change their online reading and writing given these constraints.In this article, I discuss the relationships among the three commercial sponsors and one religious sponsor of the “My Online Friends” (MOF) discussion board, a group composed of approximately 120 women who are all members of the LDS, or Mormon, church. On the MOF discussion board, intersections among sponsors affect the women's establishment of group and individual identities and their use of relational literacy. In response to commercial sponsors’ coding and rules of use, which constrained the MOF women's religious and individual identity construction, the MOF women acted to change the commercial sponsorship of their spaces, yet they also adopted subject positions initially provided by commercial sponsors.