EXPLORING ONLINE INTERCULTURAL NEGOTIATION AMONG ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS WITH STUDY ABROAD EXPERIENCE: A DIGITAL ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE STUDY

Date

2026-2-11

Author

Özkal, Ceyhun

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This doctoral dissertation examines how Turkish English language learners (ELLs) who completed a one-semester Erasmus study-abroad (SA) (2023–2024) construct, perform, and reflect on identity through digital self-representation. Using digital ethnography with purposive sampling, five undergraduate ELLs were followed during the re-entry period. Data were drawn from social media posts and Stories, in-depth interviews, and fieldnotes. Analysis combined open coding and thematic analysis, informed by concepts of identity, investment, imagined communities, and intercultural development. Findings show that social media functioned simultaneously both as a space of agency and constraint. Participants curated mobile, cosmopolitan selves, sustained intercultural ties, and leveraged English as symbolic and material capital oriented to future trajectories. At the same time, platform logics of visibility and self-branding, stereotypes encountered in host contexts, and uneven institutional support (e.g., visas and procedures) limited what could be said, shown, and learned. The SA experience was also framed through neoliberal discourses of skills, competitiveness, and employability, yet moments of critical reflection on inequality, belonging, and ethical representation emerged across the pre-departure, in-sojourn, and re-entry phases. The study contributes an empirically grounded account of online intercultural identity work after short-term mobility. It recommends integrating critical intercultural pedagogy and digital literacies into tertiary education, with scaffolded tasks across mobility stages, and calls for policies that reduce structural barriers to ensure more equitable and transformative SA outcomes.

Subject Keywords

intercultural identity negotiation, social media representation, English language learners, digital ethnography, study abroad

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118425

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis