Arny Irhani Asmin, Pratiwi Retnaningdyah, Ali Mustofa
The purpose of this study was to examine how Indonesian English lecturers use Facebook and Instagram to construct professional identity and pursue professional development through everyday digital literacy practices. Using a blended netnographic approach, data were gathered over five months through sustained social media observation and semi structured interviews with fifteen English lecturers from public and private universities across Indonesia. Thematic analysis revealed three interrelated themes shaping online professional identity practices, extending knowledge dissemination, developing professional branding, and engaging in digital professional communities. Findings indicate that lecturers' social media engagement is intentional and strategic, operating as professional identity performance shaped by platform affordances, audience awareness, and institutional expectations. Through knowledge sharing, lecturers positioned themselves as credible educators and knowledge brokers within public digital spaces. Professional branding practices involved managing visibility, privacy, credibility, and boundaries between personal and professional selves. Participation in digital professional communities supported informal learning, networking, peer recognition, and access to professional opportunities including invitations to speak, mentoring roles, and career advancement. Importantly, professional development did not emerge as an automatic consequence of social media use, but resulted from sustained, consistent, and reflexive professional identity performance over time. This study contributes to research on digital professional identity by integrating dramaturgical perspectives with digital literacy theory while foregrounding the Indonesian higher education context. Overall, the findings position social media as an extension of academic work where professional identity, digital literacy, and professional development are continuously negotiated within culturally and institutionally situated environments. These dynamics highlight agency, constraint, and negotiation in lecturers mediated professional lives. Copyright (c) 2025 The Authors This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Languages and Literature Department, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Indonesia
