Critical Digital Literacies in the Language Classroom and Beyond

"Critical Digital Literacies in the Language Classroom and Beyond," with Francesca Marino, Visiting Professor, Department of Linguistics. This session focuses on critical digital literacies (CDL), understood as practices for interrogating and resisting how power, ideologies, and inequalities operate in digitally mediated spaces. Moving beyond functional technical skills, CDL considers how digital platforms, algorithms, and generative AI shape learner agency, identity, and representation. Drawing on recent scholarship (e.g., Darvin, 2026; Marino, 2026; Weniger & Xu, 2026), participants will reflect on how sociotechnical structures can reproduce power and dominant ideologies (e.g., ideologies of nativeness). The session will also introduce practical pedagogical resources, including multimodal counterstorytelling, platform comparison, and critical analysis of AI outputs, that participants can adapt for language classrooms and learners' everyday digital lives. Francesca Marino, PhD, is a Visiting Professor in Linguistics at Ohio University, where she teaches applied linguistics and coordinates the Technology-Enhanced Language Teaching (TELT) certificate. Her teaching and research focus on multimodality, digital media, and technology-enhanced language learning. She is co-editor of the Routledge volume Multimodal Practices in Higher Education (Kessler, Casal & Marino, 2026), and her work has appeared in journals including Applied Linguistics, System, and Research Methods in