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This dissertation uses qualitative case studies of seven graduate and undergraduate students in which I examine their situated literacy and identity practices within social network sites. I argue that activity on social network sites is ubiquitous, purposeful, and integral to students’ literate lives. My research examines identity and literacy practices on social network sites by considering individuals’ site use in context. Chapter One situates my research within past studies of digital literacy practices, self-sponsored writing, and identity, and I consider how individuals’ networked literate practices are embedded in and influenced by social context, institutional and technological structures, and the history of these structures. While much work on social network sites in writing studies focuses on rhetorical analyses of profile pages or a consideration of these sites for use in the writing classroom, my research views activity on these sites within specific writers’ larger online and offline literacy practices. Chapter Two introduces my ethnographic case study methodology that combined methods of data collection from different sources, including face-to-face interviews, online written texts, time use diaries and video screen capture. This project does not draw strict boundaries between online and offline activities or between activity on different social network sites, but instead investigates the relationship between them. Instead of studying online interactions based on their textual record, I include data from other sources to gain a better understanding of this online activity as distributed across sites and integrated within daily literacy practices. Chapter Three focuses on …