Facebook as a Literacy Landscape: (Un)Bordering Languacultural Repertoires of Recently Resettled Bhutanese and Karen Refugee Adults in the U.S.

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Abstract

Grounded in the concepts of medial literacy, language as assemblage, and social identity, and using visual ethnographic and participatory methods within a case study design, this research examines how four Bhutanese and Karen adults mobilized multilingual, multimodal, multi-semiotic, and languacultural repertoires across Facebook and offline spaces to make meaning and reconstruct and reconfigure identity. Findings reveal that their media literacy practices are localized, lived, embodied, and deeply rooted in everyday life, forming an assemblage for meaning-making and identity-making not only through human-centered speaking, reading, writing, knowing, being, and becoming, but also through non-human configurations where digital tools like audio messages, cultural artefacts, material objects, language, memory, emotion, and other semiotic resources are entangled together.

Author

• Xia Chao, Duquesne University