Digital savvy fanfiction designer: Examining multimodal literacy practice for 21st century classrooms

Abstract

Drawing upon the data from a two-year-long virtual ethnographic study, this article examines multimodal literacy practices of a multilingual female youth who was participating in a Korean popular culture (K-Pop) online fan site, Soompi.com. Adopting New Literacy Studies (NLS) and Multimodality as theoretical framework, this study describes how she developed her fanfiction texts and multimodal products and how her fanfiction writing helped her enact social identities in online spaces. Findings clearly show that she understood fanfiction writing as a social endeavor, which had impact on the multimodal design of her fanfiction writing and social connections that she built with her audience. Based on the aspects of the youth’s out-of-school literate and social practices, this study provides some suggestions regarding how literacy and language educators can create their classrooms in ways to help the students engaged with meaningful learning.