Abstract
As a result of current cultural shifts due to social media in Turkey, there has been an explosion of research on social media use and how to viably apply it within an educational setting. However, studies tend to describe platforms and theorize how their features might be beneficial rather than directly analyzing how social media is used to promote and conceptualize certain educational concepts. Building off of an interpretation of social media use, presence, and profile maintenance as a form of self-presentation as well as Pittard’s (2017) and Hu et al’s (2018) analyses of social media as an educational medium, this study looks beyond this theoretical application by exploring images, related towards English language knowledge, pinned on Pinterest. In this way, via a discourse analysis, this study explored how users defined important linguistic elements about Turkish English language education on five, publicly available, personal boards connected to the ''ingilizce dilbilgisi'' (English Language Knowledge) search. Results from this study show that users’ conception of English, defining skills to master the language, centered on building subject-specific vocabulary, proper pronunciation, and a focus on grammar. These findings suggest that Pinterest can be viewed as a viable route to cultivate English knowledge within Turkey. Additionally, these findings highlight the interconnected nature between this online network of Turkish Pinterest Users and their contextual conceptualization of English language knowledge.
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