L o w e r c a s e t h e o r i e s e x p l o r e a s p e c i f i c a r e a o f n e w literacies and/or a new technology, such as the social communicative transactions occurring with text mes-saging (e.g., Lewis & Fabos, 2005 ). Lowercase perspec-tives also include those that explore a focused disciplinary base, such as the semiotics of multimodal-ity in online media (e.g., Kress, 2003 ); a distinctive con-ceptual approach, such as new literacy studies (Street, 1 9 9 5 , 2 0 0 3 ) ; o r o n l i n e l i t e r a c i e s w i t h i n a s p e c i f i c d e v e l -opmental level (e.g., Alvermann, Hutchins, & McDevitt, 2012 ; Marsh, 2011

. These lowercase theories are better able to keep up with the rapidly changing nature of lit-eracy in a deictic world because they are closer to the specific types of changes that are taking place

How can adequate theory be developed when the object that we seek to study is itself ephemeral, continuously being redefined by a changing context? Recently, a dual-level theory of New Literacies has been proposed to re-spond to this problem (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek, & Henry, 2013 ). It conceptualizes new literacies on two levels: uppercase (New Literacies) and lowercase (new literacies). We used both levels of New Literacies theory to frame this study