Constructing Glocal Identities Through Multilingual Writing Practices on Flickr.com®

Abstract

This article reports on a study of user-generated multilingual writing activities on the photo sharing site, Flickr.com®. It discusses how Flickr users deploy their multilingual resources when interacting with international audiences, the factors affecting their language choice, and how new multilingual identities are constructed. An exploratory content analysis of the photo sites and profiles of 100 Flickr users was followed up by an online questionnaire survey and focused online interviews of Chinese and Spanish users. This article shows that Flickr is a highly multilingual Web 2.0 space, where language choice is affected by the users' situated linguistic ecology, their imagined audience, the content of their photos, and the perceived functions of Flickr. Our findings also reveal new relations between the local and the global. The article concludes by arguing that multilingual writing practices are crucial in negotiating “glocal” identities and widening participation in Web 2.0 spaces such as Flickr.

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