Written by:
Suriati Abas, State University of New York, United States
G Yeon Park, Korea National Open University, South Korea
Simon Pierre Munyaneza, Indiana University Bloomington, United States
Jae-hyun Im, Indiana University Bloomington, United States

Abstract: In March 2020, when the pandemic hit the nation, elementary school teachers turned to bitmoji classrooms to sustain students’ learning. Multiple virtual replicas of classroom themes were instantly created and shared across social media spaces. The sudden craze prompted the four of us to investigate configurations of book shelves or, s(h)elfies (selfies of books) in bitmoji classrooms. We focused on s(h)elfies that display diverse books with a social justice theme. Using netnography, we examined bitmoji classrooms uploaded onto public Facebook groups for a year. We did critical case sampling, selecting unique cases to examine (Etikan, Musa & Alkassim, 2016). In this visual scholarly article, we provided our analysis of three s(h)elfies undergirded by socio-spatial (Comber, 2015) and multimodal theory (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001). Our findings revealed that s(h)elfies in bitmoji classrooms is not just a trend, but also, a literacy practice.

Keywords: s(h)elfies, bitmoji classrooms, literacy, multimodal literacy, socio-spatial, pandemic pedagogy