FEMALE EMIRATI LINKEDIN IDENTITIES: CHALLENGING CULTURAL BARRIERS IN BUSINESS ENGLISH COURSES S. Hopkyns, P. Trejo Zayed University (UNITED ARAB EMIRATES) Abstract In Spring 2020, three classes of Emirati university students (n = 60) took an elective Business English course at an English medium university in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. One of the course projects involved using ‘LinkedIn’, which is the world’s largest professional networking site used in over 200 countries (LinkedIn.com). During the ‘LinkedIn project’ students created personal profiles, took training courses, posted content, made connections and produced a business guide. Although class motivation was high at the start of the project, due to the practical nature of the tasks, as the semester continued students encountered both cultural barriers and bias while using the platform. Our aim is to raise awareness of such challenges and suggest ways in which professional networking platforms can better suit the needs of diverse populations, including female students from Middle-Eastern countries. This paper begins by investigating the role social media plays in facilitating the development of online identities. A post-structuralist approach to identity is taken where plural, socially-constructed and dynamic aspects of identity construction are recognized. While many studies exist on the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter for language learning and identity construction, the use of LinkedIn in business English courses has not previously been explored. Findings from a classroom based enquiry (CBE), involving 60 Emirati female university students, are presented. Reflective essays and classroom observations were used to explore students’ use of the platform and how identities were expressed through language and semiotic resources. Key themes to emerge from the data included cultural barriers regarding profile picture choices and profile descriptions, and linguistic challenges related to content of posts and training courses. The paper ends with practical suggestions on how LinkedIn can be used in a more inclusive way within diverse language classrooms. Keywords: Identity, Culture, Educational Technology, Business English, Inclusion, Diversity, LinkedIn. 1 INTRODUCTION In today’s era of globalization and digitalization, more and more individuals are constructing and enacting aspects of their identities online. Reliance on social media for communication has especially increased in the Covid-19 era where both local and international face-to-face meetings and travel are restricted in many contexts. As a consequence, connecting with friends, colleagues, teachers and classmates over social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as video conferencing websites such as Zoom, Teams and Adobe Connect has become the norm. Online interaction has traditionally been named ‘virtual’, which by definition implies it is not real. However, recently the division between online and offline lives and identities have blurred into what Blommaert (2020) describes as an ‘online-offline nexus’ [1]. In this sense, online identities are often indistinguishable from offline identities and are therefore just as ‘real’. Identity can be understood as the way in which people construct and make sense of their relationship to the world across time and space, as well as their possibilities for the future [2] [3]. This paper adopts a post-structuralist perspective to identities, whereby they are recognized as complex, multifaceted, dynamic, and socially-constructed [4] [5] [6]. As Rose et al. (2020) state, ‘nobody becomes who they are in a vacuum’ [7]. Rather, individuals develop their identities ‘by picking up various clues from the people and the environment surrounding them, either face-to-face or in an electronically mediated mode’ [7]. Glocalization or the mixing of global and local aspects of identities is common in diverse contexts. As Langmia (2017) points out, ‘local cultures and national cultures now dovetail on the same social media platforms’ [8]. However, many leading social media platforms are predominately English-medium and Western-orientated. For example, LinkedIn, which was officially launched in 2003, was co-founded by USA-based Reid Hoffman and is now led by Ryan Roslanksy, who resides in the San Francisco Bay area [9]. Despite having the aim of connecting professionals globally, the website is dominated by the English language and Western cultural norms, such as sharing profile pictures of faces with wide Proceedings of ICERI2020 Conference 9th-10th November 2020 ISBN: 978-84-09-24232-0 3159