Constructing Identities in Online Encounters

This article examines digital storytelling practices of 12-15-year-old students from Finland and Greece. In online settings, students construct virtual selves through video and text-based interactions with peers and, thus, perform identity work using English as the language of communication. This study examines digital storytelling as space of intertextuality where different speakers' utterances resignify the context of learning. The authors apply inductive analysis of interview data and a multimodal approach to digital stories as combinations of semiotic systems in order to link with a dynamic digital literacy. Findings indicate that the students use an impersonal, scientific-like style to explain how a chemical reaction happens in some stories. In others, they place the focus on human relationships with body language and gesture adding a personal style. However, rather than language, it is the way the story is performed and acted out that authenticates student work. This bears implications for both the teaching of English and the design of digital storytelling aiming for web-based peer exchanges.