DIGITAL IDENTITY NEGOTIATION AND L2 MOTIVATIONAL SELF SYSTEM: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA USE RESHAPES ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING MOTIVATION AMONG UZBEK UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

In the age of pervasive digital connectivity, social media platforms have emerged not merely as communication tools but as identity-forming spaces where language learners actively construct, perform, and negotiate their sense of self in relation to English. Drawing on Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) and Norton's concept of investment and identity, this study investigates how Uzbek university students' engagement with English-language content across Instagram, YouTube, and Telegram shapes their Ideal L2 Self, Ought-to L2 Self, and L2 Learning Experience. Despite the rapid digitalisation of Uzbek higher education following national language policy reforms, the intersection of digital identity practices and English learning motivation remains theoretically underexplored in the Central Asian context. Employing a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design, the study collects quantitative data via a validated motivational self-system questionnaire administered to 320 undergraduate students across four Uzbek universities, followed by in-depth semi-structured interviews with 24 purposively selected participants. Social media usage logs and digital artefact analysis complement the interview data to triangulate findings. The quantitative phase examines the predictive relationships between specific social media practices   content creation, passive consumption, parasocial interaction with native speakers, and translingual code-switching   and the three dimensions of L2MSS. The qualitative phase explores how students narrativise their online English-using identities and how digital role models mediate their imagined futures as English speakers. Preliminary findings suggest that content-creation practices, particularly short-form video production and English captioning, correlate significantly with a stronger Ideal L2 Self and greater self-regulatory learning investment, while passive consumption alone shows a weaker and occasionally demotivating effect when accompanied by negative social comparison. The study contributes an empirically grounded, culturally situated model of digitally mediated L2 motivation and proposes pedagogical implications for ELT practitioners in Uzbekistan and comparable post-Soviet EFL contexts, including the strategic integration of identity-affirming digital tasks into university English curricula