Language Policy and New Media

Abstract

New media and the new communication spaces they bring are often heralded as revolutionary contexts of language use. This chapter aims to look beyond this hype to consider the effects of this recent context of use on existing language policy theory. An initial case study is Facebook and its Translations application, which I examine using virtual ethnographic methods. In this context, the commercial entity Facebook and the individuals of the Irish language Translations application are the primary language policy actors, developing the de facto language policy of this domain and affecting the multilingual World Wide Web. It is concluded that commercial entities, technological developments, and individuals are not merely agents or actors in language policy processes. Instead, the author adopts the concepts of media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence to understand how media producers and consumers act in new and unpredictable ways in language policy processes online.

Breaking barriers: Indigenous nurse navigator role in oncology care for the Inuit

“…This is a direct correlation to TB rates being 300 times the national average. This population of 65,000 has the highest lung cancer rates in the world (Lenihan, 2018).…”

Lever les barrières : du rôle de l’infirmière pivot pour les Autochtones dans les soins oncologiques aux Inuits

“…On observe une corrélation directe avec le taux de tuberculose qui est 300 fois supérieur à la moyenne nationale. L'Inuit Nunangat, dont la population compte quelque 65 000 personnes, présente le taux de cancer du poumon le plus élevé au monde (Lenihan, 2018).…”

Language, gender and political symbolics: Insights from citizen digital discourses on gender‐sensitive language in Serbia

“…However, the traditional sociolinguistic view of media as pillars of language ideologies, while still relevant, can no longer be adopted the same way in the digital age. The co‐existence of producer‐ and user‐generated content – for instance, of news articles and online reader comments – is transforming the public space, with the power of media consumers coming to parallel that of media producers (Lenihan, 2018). Online news sites that I focus on here are a prime example of media convergence: no longer just reproducing newspaper articles, they include user comments where ordinary people's voices interact with those of journalists or other readers, with studies showing that both tend to be read together (Soffer, 2019).…”