A Frames Perspective to ELT Teachers’ Identity Construction on Social Media

Participation in social media life entails constructing and displaying a different set of identity roles than the ones traditionally assumed by individuals. Teachers in general and English language teachers in particular have not been hesitant to draw upon the numerous resources and enablements offered by this space in forming identity types aligned with their profession. Along these lines, this study aimed to probe into how five Iranian ELT teachers, active on Instagram platform, displayed identity and what frames those identity types would involve. Having adopted a netnographic method and a frames theoretical perspective, the research employed archival online data, namely Instagram posts and statuses, and open questionnaire textual data to arrive at the patterns of how ELT teacher identity formation takes place. Regarding work-related frames, it was found that the study informants constructed identity in five professional, instructional, vocational, and economic frames, and that the only frame left untouched by them was that of discipline-related one. With respect to context-related frames, the only context they heeded seemed to be that of their local here-and-now setting.

کلیدواژه ها:

language teacher identity ، frame analysis ، Netnography ، Iran ، Instagram