The influence of social media
The uses and networks of literacy crisscross through many domains, exposing people to multiple, often amalgamated sources of sponsoring powers -- secular, religious, bureaucratic, commercial, technological. In other words, what is so destabilized about contemporary literacy today also makes it so available and potentially innovative, ripe for picking, one might say, for people suitably positioned.
Deborah Brandt
Each of the international students we interviewed uses social media, and uses it in abundance. Facebook, twitter, and Instagram provide the social glue that holds the international students to both their home relationships and new American friendships. This digital world serves as a place where students can connect and practice putting their English writing skills to use. Facebook is an overwhelmingly popular platform for connecting with American social circles -- Sewon, Wonju, Abdul, Tae, Xin, and Reshma all noted that they posted to Facebook primarily in English. The reason is abundantly clear: they want their writing understood by their American friends and classmates.
Deborah Brandt
Each of the international students we interviewed uses social media, and uses it in abundance. Facebook, twitter, and Instagram provide the social glue that holds the international students to both their home relationships and new American friendships. This digital world serves as a place where students can connect and practice putting their English writing skills to use. Facebook is an overwhelmingly popular platform for connecting with American social circles -- Sewon, Wonju, Abdul, Tae, Xin, and Reshma all noted that they posted to Facebook primarily in English. The reason is abundantly clear: they want their writing understood by their American friends and classmates.
Uses of home language on other forms of social media differ. These choices that the students make regarding which language literacy skills to use is mainly governed by audience. Abdul uses Arabic on twitter, because his audience is from his home country. Xin does not use her home language on Facebook, twitter, or Google because they are blocked in her native country, China. She is effectively without an audience for her Chinese prose. The rest of the interviewees use both, most often in the same Facebook or Instagram post. This dual-language usage allows for communication with both English and non-English literate peers. It becomes a meeting ground where the two worlds merge.
Reshma is the most sophisticated user of social media out of our interviewees. She uses English when she wants most of her audience to know what she is writing about, since her Hindu, Urdu, German, and French speaking friends and family understand written English. She also deliberately uses her linguistically varied literate skills to exclude specific members of her audience when the need arises. For example, when she does not want her German audience to know what she is writing about, she uses French. If they ask her to translate, she ignores their request.
Reshma is the most sophisticated user of social media out of our interviewees. She uses English when she wants most of her audience to know what she is writing about, since her Hindu, Urdu, German, and French speaking friends and family understand written English. She also deliberately uses her linguistically varied literate skills to exclude specific members of her audience when the need arises. For example, when she does not want her German audience to know what she is writing about, she uses French. If they ask her to translate, she ignores their request.
Social media both sponsors the international students' literacy and allows them to sponsor their own literacy. In Reshma's case, it even performs a gatekeeping function, withholding literacy from certain populations. Writing on social media sites is a relevant, contemporary, ubiquitous literacy event. Social media acts on, and is acted on, by these international students in their quest for English language literacy.