English Education and Digital Media: New Ways to Enhance Cultural Sensitivity and Global Perspective

Abstract

Cultural diversity is a crucial element of human life as it determines cross-cultural relationships, constraining the socio-cultural and economic activities of culturally diverse persons. More recently, digital media has been used as a platform for expanding knowledge on cultural sensitivity in the vast population of digital media users in the Hu Xiang region. Strategic approaches that English educators have used include tweaking curricula to match the needs of digital media users, banking on encouragement, increasing digital media literature and highlighting challenges facing digital media education and English learning. These strategies have been diploid contextually through videos, social media communities, podcasts, and posts to capture users’ attention. However, the deployment of these tactics encounters the challenge of socio-economic differences where marginalized individuals hardly access these materials on social media due to low internet penetration and unaffordable electronic gadgets like laptops, tablets and smartphones.