Abstract Digital ecologies have different affordances that language learners leverage for meaning making in digital communications. Many studies have examined the affordances of specific digital platforms, including how they shape storytelling and impact the positioning of participants. Fewer have looked at how local, offline ecologies impact meaning making in digital ecologies, however. This study builds on previous work to examine how meaning making is shaped by both local and digital ecologies in digital, transnational communications. Drawing on multimodal and narrative analytical perspectives, I examine how positionings are enacted across interactions between youth (aged 11–13) from China, Uganda, and the United States as they participate in an educational project called Global StoryBridges. I trace the arc of communication as groups watch a video produced by the site in China, showing how the local, offline ecologies in which they are situated impact the ways in which they are able to enact positionings with each other. Findings show how material inequalities at sites drive inequity in the way that groups are positioned during interactions. Affordances of local ecologies impact the ways youth use digital affordances, such as authorship attribution and the fixed sequencing of posts. Implications and ways to account for inequities are shared.
Gordon Blaine West (Mon,) studied this question.