i.      Culture and communication in digital learning spaces

Much of the recent work examines formal online learning–often university courses–and how culture shapes participation and interaction in virtual learning environments (VLEs) (Banerjee & Firtell, 2017b; Goodfellow & Hewling, 2005; Uzuner, 2009). Research continues to demonstrate that digital spaces are key sites for linguistic enactments of identity and community that underpin online communication and learning (Campbell & Haynes, 2020). Lam (2006) synthesizes how globalization reconfigures the culture-learning nexus and sets out research directions that echo these patterns. Culture shapes social behaviour, communication, cognition, and the use of pedagogical technologies; consequently, culturally diverse cohorts bring different worldviews to online study (Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2022). Empirical work documents cultural disconnection in multicultural courses and shows culture’s measurable influence on learning behaviours across national groups (Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2022).

The enduring influence of colonial ideology in digital learning spaces is widely discussed, with scholars arguing that prevailing epistemological frameworks tend to privilege Western approaches to knowledge and learning in educational contexts (Eijkman, 2009; Luyt, 2013; Perumal et al., 2021). The concern is that digital learning environments may inadvertently reinforce dominant practices and perspectives, including the implicit prominence of certain languages such as English within academic and online spheres (Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2022). In response, some have called for a critical re-evaluation of the dominant linguistic and cultural frameworks that currently structure digital communication, with the aim of fostering more inclusive and contextually relevant pedagogies and practices (Elf et al., 2020)

Several studies move from general claims to concrete investigations. Goodfellow and Hewling (2005) trace how wider cultural narratives and institutional culture–such as systems for content distribution, grading, and communication among students, tutors, and the university–shape online learning communities. Eliyahu-Levi (2020) examines knowledge building in a collaborative course designed to expose students to different cultural contexts. Kumi-Yeboah et al. (2022) analyze learner-instructor, learner-learner, and learner-content interactions to illuminate course dynamics.

Overall, current literature continues to demonstrate that culture is a multifaceted force in online learning–affecting identities, interactions, and outcomes–and calls for deeper, methodologically reflexive inquiry and more culturally responsive virtual pedagogy (Goodfellow & Hewling, 2005; Banerjee & Firtell, 2017b; Uzuner, 2009; Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2022).

ii.      Culturally aware learning design and facilitation

Across the literature in this area, scholars call for culturally sensitive learning design and note a continuing scarcity of fine-grained studies of cultural dynamics in online education (Banerjee & Firtell, 2017b; Uzuner, 2009).

Methodologically, Goodfellow and Hewling (2005) caution that researchers’ own cultural assumptions and theoretical frames can skew interpretations of online cultural phenomena. They–and Kumi-Yeboah et al. (2022)–warn against essentialist models (e.g., simple individualism/collectivism or high/low context dichotomies) and argue for attention to “hidden cultures” within national contexts (regional, generational, or upbringing-related) that may be invisible to participants themselves. Because education entails the transmission of behaviours and ways of thinking, cultural sensitivity is especially salient in online settings (Banerjee & Firtell, 2017b).

In more recent literature, studies consistently report that effective digital learning for diverse learners is shaped by facilitation that actively supports equitable participation. Recommendations include educator development to deepen cultural and racial knowledge, explicit framing of tasks that foster critical consciousness and counter-narratives, and the diversification of culturally relevant resources and examples (Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2022; McClure & Cifuentes, 2022).

Practical emphases in design of digital learning include structured turn-taking and small-group routines, clear norms for disagreement, and scaffolds that make expectations for contribution visible and safe. Where multilingual cohorts are present, programs should make policy-level decisions about translation/mediation tools (when and how they may be used) and provide guidance so that their use supports–not substitutes for–intercultural learning goals (Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2022; McClure & Cifuentes, 2022).

It is argued that future work should specify how platform-level affordances (e.g., visibility, threading, turn length, analytics prompts) interact with course design and facilitation to shape participation across cultures, and compare these effects across platforms and institutional contexts. Mixed methods designs linking behavioural traces with qualitative evidence of learning and belonging would sharpen claims about what designs work for whom and under what conditions.

iii.      Intercultural and cross-cultural learning in digital spaces

By 2004, researchers had recognized that technology-supported environments could be powerful sites for intercultural or cross-cultural learning–either through intentional design or as an organic outcome of diverse participants interacting online. Early work explored how to design online spaces to support intercultural communication and reported case studies of technology-supported projects.

Recent studies continue this line of inquiry (see for example Aldridge et al., 2014; Berti, 2021; Blume, 2021; Dasli, 2011; Eliyahu-Levi, 2020; Heggernes, 2021; Lindner & Méndez Garcia, 2014; McClure & Cifuentes, 2022; Shadiev & Huang, 2016; Smilan, 2017). Much of this work examines designed interventions. For example, Sandel et al. (2019) link students across Malaysia, China, and the United States in an online exchange, with the goal of exploring cultural issues, family, gender, and race directly with peers from different backgrounds, and moving beyond written texts. Shadiev and Sintawati’s 2020 review synthesizes evidence to guide effective designs. Across these studies, technology can enable communication among culturally diverse participants, enhancing intercultural communicative competence and satisfaction with both the technological and intercultural experience (Kim, 2016; Sandel et al., 2019; Shadiev & Huang, 2016; Shadiev & Sintawati, 2020). The toolset has evolved: 2004-2014 studies commonly used discussion boards, text chat, and blogs; 2014-2019 work more often features videoconferencing, email, social media, and increasingly video recording, podcasts, and microblogging. This shift coincides with greater attention to pedagogy–how to design activities that genuinely facilitate exchange and how to evaluate feasibility and impact. The concept of transcultural digital literacies further argues for pedagogies that treat digital texts as “habitable spaces” for all students—not only those with migration experiences (Kim, 2016; Sandel et al., 2019; Shadiev & Huang, 2016; Shadiev & Sintawati, 2020). Studies also note the need for adequate training, guidance, and communication skills, as well as stimulating contexts, while acknowledging persistent technical and institutional constraints (Grieve et al., 2022).

Alongside designed interventions, other work shows that digital environments can foster incidental cross-cultural learning. Kim (2016), for instance, describes young people from varied backgrounds engaging with Korean popular culture; more generally, everyday tools–discussion boards, chats, and social media– routinely bring people from different linguistic and cultural communities into contact, enabling informal exposure and understanding (Shadiev & Sintawati, 2020). Framed through transcultural digital literacies, readers become “renters” and texts “habitable spaces,” highlighting how ordinary engagement with digital content can prompt movement across cultural boundaries (Kim, 2016). Complementing these findings, Croucher (2011) models how social networking sites mediate cultural adaptation in intercultural contexts.

Methodologically, we suggest that the field still needs stronger designs and broader applicability. Some authors call for longitudinal studies to track change and clarify causal relations; for experimental and replication studies to support causal inference and generalizability; and for larger, more diversified samples beyond single respondents or self-report (Banerjee & Firtell, 2017a; Hu et al., 2017; Ju et al., 2021; Sandel et al., 2019). As we have argued ourselves, qualitative work would benefit from clearer theoretical grounding (Uzuner, 2009). Given rapid technological change, it is noted that researchers need to examine less-studied technologies and keep pace with emerging tools (Avgousti, 2018). Finally, several authors urge deeper engagement with theories of multicultural learning and with power and colonial histories in education, and they underline the value of further research syntheses to organize a growing evidence base for practice (Banerjee & Firtell, 2017a; Avgousti, 2018).

iv.      Media, digital, and transcultural literacies

Work uncovered in our 2004 review treated “digital literacy” largely through the notions of new/electronic literacies, linking literacy directly to culture, technology, and critical engagement with digital media (Street, 1984; Warschauer, 1999). Early authors argued that the internet, as a new communicative modality, demanded evolving literacies shaped by broader social and cultural change; notably, media literacy did not surface as a distinct theme in that earlier search. From a philosophical perspective, Vlieghe (2016) cautions against reducing ‘digital literacy’ to training, urging attention to how digitization reshapes education itself.

In the 2025 corpus, scholars differentiate several interrelated literacies:

• Technological literacy: more than technical proficiency; a culturally situated phenomenon that includes “literacy events” and practices (Toscano, 2011).
• Critical media literacy: the capacity to analyze and produce media while identifying, interrogating, and disrupting dominant ideologies embedded in media and technologies (Shrodes, 2021).
• Critical digital literacies: youth-focussed work on using digital tools to resist oppressive ideologies and imagine alternative futures (Shrodes, 2021).
• Transcultural digital literacies: informal, self-directed, multimodal practices through which learners access global texts and communities; these literacies challenge the primacy of writing as young people create audio/visual texts (Kim, 2016).

Across this literature, several themes recur. First, literacies are culturally embedded practices, not neutral skill sets; technology and culture are tightly coupled, with digital media reshaping the very culture of literacy (Moore & Grisham, 2015; Toscano, 2011). Second, participation and production matter as much as analysis: studies foreground youth engagement and the ways participatory cultures cultivate critical media literacy (Shrodes, 2021). Third, globalization and multimodality are now baseline conditions for literacy practice: transcultural digital literacies highlight how media creation and consumption extend beyond print to audio-visual modes and transnational networks (Kim, 2016). These trends collectively mark a continuing redefinition of literacy education in the digital era (Koutsogiannis, 2015).

Overall, contemporary media and digital literacies are best understood as culturally situated capacities for critical engagement, production, and global interaction. They support intellectual growth and socialization by leveraging opportunities afforded by digital technologies and remain crucial for meaningful participation in an interconnected society (Bloom & Johnston, 2010; Moore & Grisham, 2015; Toscano, 2011; Shrodes, 2021; Kim, 2016; Koutsogiannis, 2015).

v.      Language and literacy education: Pedagogy and design

Building on evolving perspectives on literacies, work in this current review highlights how this plurality intersects with culture and pedagogy, often with a focus on language and/or literacy education. In language education, Oxford (2010) argues for aligning learning goals and curricula with twenty-first-century conditions, a stance that complements these shifts in digital and critical literacies. Design frameworks such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) also emphasize integrating content and language goals in task and curriculum design (Coyle, 2015).

It is clear that writers in the field hold that culture remains central in language and literacy education. Scholarship in language instruction emphasizes culturally relevant pedagogy that supports achievement, cultural competence, and critical consciousness–especially for English Learners–and offers multifaceted strategies and models for practice (Eutsler & Perez, 2022; Moore & Grisham, 2015; Shih, 2013). Frameworks such as the Culturally Relevant Model for Digital Language and Literacy Instruction guide educators in tailoring instruction to diverse learners; cooperative learning and targeted small-group work are highlighted as especially supportive (Eutsler & Perez, 2022). This aligns with efforts to cultivate a school “culture of literacy” integrating language, literature, arts, and student activity (Moore & Grisham, 2015).

A sociocultural perspective treats literacy not as neutral, universal skills but as multiple, situated, and ideological practices through which people communicate, make meaning, and enact identities in specific contexts (Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2014; Perry, 2021). Accordingly, print-centric and numeracy-focussed approaches sit in tension with functional, sociocultural, and human-centred views, and scholars urge attention to the affective and practical dimensions of language as lived among people, places, and practices (Perry, 2021).

Twenty-first-century literacies extend well beyond print and locality, challenging conventional categories in multicultural education (Kim, 2016). Educational policy regimes that privilege functional linguistic/numeric skills can inadvertently reinforce colonial languages, facilitating some global exchanges while excluding other linguistic and cultural forms (Perry, 2021).

Technology integration remains uneven–often shaped by teachers’ beliefs and prior experiences–yet, when approached through constructivist and culturally relevant designs, it can transform learners’ experiences and improve reading outcomes; more research is needed in mainstream, inclusive classrooms (Eutsler & Perez, 2022). Digital technologies also help constitute and sustain the evolving “culture of literacy,” underscoring the ongoing need to study technology’s role in language and culture learning (Chun, 2017; Moore & Grisham, 2015).

Taken together, this literature calls for culturally responsive, critically informed technology integration and for viewing literacies as plural, situated practices shaped by policy and power (Street, 1984; Warschauer, 1999; Moore & Grisham, 2015; Shih, 2013; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2014; Kim, 2016; Perry, 2021; Eutsler & Perez, 2022; Chun, 2017).

vi.      L2/FL language learning: Embodiment, metaphor, culture, and design

We noted elsewhere that contemporary literature offers little research or commentary on the social or cultural impacts of embodiment/ disembodiment in digital worlds. Research on culture and embodied experience, does appear, however, in the literature of the ‘second language acquisition’ (SLA) field (see for example Avgousti, 2018; Roche & Todorova, 2010; Shih, 2013). SLA research shows that embodiment–bodily/sensorimotor experience–can shape language processing and instruction. Empirical studies link such experience to comprehension and learning (Johnson-Glenberg et al., 2016; Lindgren et al., 2016; Pouw et al., 2016; Shapiro & Stolz, 2019), while design studies on technology (animations, virtual reality) report mixed but promising effects, with outcomes depending on task-goal alignment and the degree of bodily engagement (Arnett & Suñer, 2019; Clavel Vázquez & Clavel-Vázquez, 2023; Comisso & Della Putta, 2023; de Knop, 2020; Lowe & Schnotz, 2014; Skulmowski & Rey, 2018; Suñer & Roche, 2019; Vázquez et al., 2018).

Significantly, a cognitive-linguistic view explains that languages do not just have different forms (words/grammar); they also encode different, often embodied ways of understanding the world–frequently via metaphors (e.g., treating time like space, or emotion like temperature/height) (see for example Danesi, 2008). Because those metaphors are culture-shaped, learners need more than drills on forms; they need help seeing and experiencing the underlying mappings so they can build conceptual/pragmatic competence (i.e., understanding the meanings and using them appropriately in context)(Roche & Jessen, 2023). For this reason, it is argued that technology (animations, interactive visuals, VR) should be used to make those mappings perceptible–so learners grasp the idea the form encodes, not just the form itself (Berti, 2021; Roche & Suñer, 2016). Design cautions include avoiding the simplistic assumption that “more movement/input = embodiment,” attending to cultural and affective context, and providing guided attention to the features that matter. Taken together, this work offers practical implications for online courses: make embodied meanings and metaphorical mappings explicit; match the level of embodiment to the learning objective; use technology selectively and purposefully; and treat cultural variation as a central design parameter, not an add-on.