Doing Being on Social Media

Abstract

The present study set in Denmark explores how social media use may help to facilitate English as a second language (L2) development by means of social media literacy socialization. The data consisted of English language Ariana Grande (AG) fan TikToks made over the course of a year by a Danish girl, aged 11–12, and semi-structured interviews. Findings show that through the participant’s focus on creating a popular fan persona, she was socialized into the fan community and thereby encountered affordances for language learning and opportunities to develop her critical and digital social media skills. She communicated in English daily with fellow fans, sought English language information related to content and editing, developed a growing awareness of the language conventions in the space, and was very invested in her engagement (Norton, 2013). The study also showed that while the focus on obtaining a popular identity guided much of the participant’s engagement and thereby provided language learning affordances, it eventually resulted in a decrease in her postings and, by extension, in fewer learning opportunities. Implications for the L2 classroom are suggested.