Constructing academic identities online: Identity performance in research group blogs written by multilingual scholars

Abstract

Blogs provide an open space for research groups to publicise their research and activities, become more visible both to the local and international disciplinary communities, and conduct self-promotion. Research groups harness the affordances of the medium to weave a narrative about the group, presented through various modalities, and thus construct their online identity. The purpose of this research is to analyse how identity is constructed in research group blogs written in English by groups affiliated to Spanish institutions. In this study I address the following questions: (i) which are the facets of the group's identities created by multilingual scholars in research group blogs?; (ii) which textual and multimodal practices are adopted by researchers to construct the group's identity? To answer these questions I conducted a content analysis (focusing on written language, visuals, hyperlinks) of posts taken from 12 research group blogs. The study provides insight on how these research groups mesh different semiotic modes in their blogs to project a multifaceted identity and reveals that blogging may be a powerful instrument for research groups' identity performance and visibility.