Ambivalence and agential cuts: Shaping appropriateness and audience in transnational communications between language learners

Language learning and communication through digital platforms is situated within and takes place across different and complex digital and local ecologies. However, studies of digital interaction among learners often treat digital platforms as isolated ecologies and do not always examine the local contexts in which they are used, missing both recontextualization across platforms and how local ecologies impact digital ecologies. I utilize ecological and materialist lenses to examine the interconnections across digital and local ecologies of groups of youth from China, Uganda, and the US participating in the Global StoryBridges project. This theoretical approach informs my analysis of videos created by the youth and shared on the project website, chat interactions between groups, and interviews with site facilitators to understand how digital and local ecological factors across sites impact meaning making. Affordances were enacted in these ecologies over the course of three years in ways that reify concepts of appropriateness and audience. Specifically, I found that facilitators themselves were ambivalent about the interconnectedness of digital platforms, and that this ambivalence drove decisions about agential cutting, or the enactment of boundaries in digital spaces. The findings offer implications for educators and educational technology designers seeking to foster more intentional and equitable digital learning.