Language learning made short and sweet? Exploring student perceptions of microcelebrity teacher reels on Instagram

Many microcelebrity language teachers today share linguistic content on social media platforms to attract learners. However, little is known about how learners perceive the multimodal affordances of social media platforms utilized by microcelebrity teachers for language teaching in EFL contexts. Motivated by this gap, this study explores learner perceptions of vocabulary learning from microcelebrity language teachers in the underexplored Uzbek EFL context. Over a period of two weeks, 10 EFL students enrolled at a state university in Uzbekistan were asked to follow two Uzbek microcelebrity teacher accounts on Instagram featuring vocabulary content. In addition to the multimodal analysis of a sample of Instagram reels and stories from these accounts, learners’ experiences and perceptions about learning were elicited via learner diaries and semi-structured interviews. While the students enjoyed the engaging linguistic input incorporating role-play and references to pop culture artefacts, they also experienced challenges in relation to the fast-paced speech, brevity of the videos, and irrelevant platform-based content. The findings raise critical implications of language learning and teaching within monetized, platformized, and algorithmic social media spaces.