Power, Ideology and Identity in Digital Literacy: A Sociolinguistic Study

Abstract

This study investigates the significance of digital media in terms of social implications. It draws its theoretical insights from the Darvin and Norton model of investment (2015) as it gives purely a new dimension to the concept of digital literacy. The study is designed in order to evaluate some important aspects of Social media, particularly Facebook, as an important digital literacy practice. Firstly, the study examines the way power is operated in the digital mediated construction of social identities. Certain social identities position other identities and accord or refuse them power. These even shape social ideologies and identities as English-language speakers hold a privileged position in society while Urdu-language speakers are marginalized all over the world. Secondly, it explores the role of digital media in the investment of language and digital literacy practices to represent social ideologies at three different angles of marriage, adulthood and family. Having established a sampling frame consisting of nine Facebook pictorial postings from three Facebook pages, the findings suggested that the text and visual representations of Facebook postings use various linguistic features like literary devices that are playing an evident role in the representation of social ideologies.