Sensitising Students to Culturally Conditioned Online Behaviour by Employing Cyber Ethnography

Медийна и интернет комуникация

Media and Internet Communication

DOI 10.55206/ZNLX5874

Nikolina Tsvetkova

Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski

E-mail: ntsvetkova@phls.uni-sofia.bg

 

Abstract: The paper explores the use of cyber ethnography as a pedagogical tool for identifying and analysing culturally conditioned online behaviour within the course Intercultural Relations taught to bachelor students of European Studies at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. The study draws on longitudinal ob­serva­tions of the author’s teaching practice, as well as on the results of students’ independent cyber ethnographic investigations conducted on social media plat­forms of their choice. The paper proposes a structured teaching and learning-by-doing sequence that combines classroom and out-of-class activities and can be adapted to a variety of higher education contexts. Examples of students’ projects are presented to illustrate how cyber ethnography facilitates the exploration of intercultural communication in contemporary digital environments. Academic communication and pedagogical approaches are examined from an intercultural perspective, highlighting the relationship between online practices, cultural norms, and communicative behaviour. The findings demonstrate that integrating cyber ethnography into university teaching contributes significantly to the de­velop­ment of students’ intercultural competence. The method promotes active learning through content creation, encourages creativity and self-reflection, and strengthens analytical and critical thinking skills. Furthermore, it fosters inter­active communication between teachers and students, as well as among students themselves, creating opportunities for collaborative knowledge construction. From both communicative and methodological perspectives, the paper argues that cyber ethnography can expand and renew pedagogical frameworks for teaching intercultural communication by integrating digital literacy, multimodality, and reflective learning practices into the acquisition of knowledge and the develop­ment of intercultural communicative competence in higher education.

Keywords: Cyber ethnography, Culturally conditioned online behaviour, Inter­cul­tural communication, Tertiary education

Introduction

Contemporary tertiary education is developing in a complex, highly internationalised, environment where teacher, student and staff short-term and long-term exchange is becoming more and more common. In the European Union, the Erasmus programme was conceived and launched back in 1987 to support student mobility across EU universities and has ever since enjoyed vast popularity. Today, student, teacher and staff exchanges are part of the Erasmus+ programme and it is possible to implement various mobility schemes with programme country (within the EU) and partner country (outside the EU) universities. Globally, tertiary education institutions have long adopted the policy of encouraging mobility through various means such as a “semester abroad” during which a student remains enrolled at their home university but has the opportunity to gain academic and intercultural competences in a new environment. Universities around the globe offer courses in languages other than the official language of the country, most often in English, to increase their international attractiveness and to facilitate such mobility schemes. As Woodin, Castro and Lundgren (2020) put it, “Internationalisation has been recognized as key to the ‘success’ of a university; internationalisation is even included as one of the international indicators for ranking universities’ performance’.” [1] These authors argue that apart from an important tool in gaining a higher position in world university rankings, internationalisation can also be used to promote meaningful intercultural dialogue, which is the starting point for the current paper. Based on a longitudinal self-observation of delivering an Intercultural Relations course to European Studies students at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, the author proposes a possible approach to developing students’ intercultural competence using cyber ethnography.

Intercultural communication and tertiary education

The current internationalisation processes briefly mentioned above have led to incorporating intercultural communication in tertiary education settings so that universities can respond to the growing need to prepare students for culturally diverse academic environments, workplaces and communities. Contemporary approaches have moved beyond teaching cultural facts; instead they embrace teaching the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and critical awareness required for effective and appropriate interaction across cultural differences (Woodin et al., 2020). Research highlights intercultural communication as a core graduate attribute and a key learning outcome of internationalisation strategies in universities worldwide. [2] Recent studies emphasise the integration of intercultural communication across curricula rather than limiting it to language or international studies programmes. Among the means to develop students’ intercultural competences are experiential learning, virtual exchange, study abroad, collaborative international projects, and reflective pedagogies to foster intercultural competence and global citizenship. (Deardoff, 2017; Woodin et al., 2020; Parsons, Mamadova, Karaasenova & Paradiz, 2026). [3] At the policy level, organisations such as the OECD (2018) have linked intercultural communication to broader notions of global competence, including the ability to understand multiple perspectives and engage constructively with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. [4] The Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (2018), which provides an educational framework for teaching, learning, and assessing intercultural competence within schools and universities, also underscores the link between intercultural competence and the skills needed to participate in both democratic and intercultural situations, emphasizing intercultural dialogue, respect for diversity, empathy, openness, and communication skills. [5] What is more, it is embedded in the RFCDC’s 20 competences, which are organized into four areas: values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge and critical understanding. (see Barrett, 2020). [6]

If we go back to the specifics of the context in which the current study is set – the bachelor programme in European Studies at Sofia University “St. KLiment Ohridski”, it must be noted that foreign languages feature prominently on its curriculum – students study two foreign languages in their first and second year, then in their third year, they study terminology of the EU institutions in these languages and in their fourth year, they study History, Culture and Society in the two languages in reference to the countries/cultures where those are spoken. They can also opt for studying Introduction to Multilingualism in the EU in their first year and Intercultural Relations in their third year. If we remain only within the scope of these more or less language-related disciplines, even without mentioning the subjects connected with law, economics, media, etc., we can conclude that there are conditions to develop students’ intercultural competence in a way that will enable them to become intercultural speakers or mediators (Byram 2009; Wilkinson 2012; Wagner, Cardetti and Byram 2018). [7]

 

Researching cultures by use of cyber ethnography

One of the methods employed in studying cultures is ethnography. As Agar (1980) [8] contends, ethnography is the most appropriate method for understanding a culture because it allows researchers to study people in their natural social settings and to interpret the meanings that guide their behaviour. Agar emphasises that culture is not simply a collection of customs or facts; it is a system of shared meanings that becomes visible when people encounter differences or misunderstandings. Ethnography therefore involves a continuous process of interpreting and reinterpreting cultural meanings from the perspective of those being studied, while also reflecting on one’s own cultural assumptions. More recently, in the context of intercultural communication and international education, Wil­ken (2009) [9] points out that methods and techniques such as participant observation, interviews, and reflexive analysis allow researchers to explore how people experience cultural differences, belonging, and identity in practice, rather than relying on abstract cultural categories.

Roberts et al. (2001) [10] argue that ethnography enables language learners to investigate cultural practices systematically through observation, participation, and reflection, thereby developing intercultural competence and critical cultural awareness. Given the fact that today students participate in educational exchanges more often than not, it is beneficial to provide opportunities for them to become acquainted with the basic principles of doing ethnographic observation and to trial it out in practice. That is why, the Intercultural Relations course mentioned in the current paper contains a module on ethnography and the study of cultures.

Over that past almost ten years, however, the author has started introducing cyber ethnography and cyber ethnographic observation as well. The reasons for this are connected with the advancement of social media technology, the growing use of online channels and social media tools to communicate and participate in various interest-based groups and the need for equipping young people with tools to critically engage in and analyse such processes. What is more, people, including learners, use such channels in their personal lives as well as in a professional capacity. According to Keely-Browne (2011),

“cyber-ethnology is a new research methodology located within an interpretive research paradigm, gaining momentum in use and credibility in reputation. With its routes in ‘ethnography’, as part of the social science branch of anthropology, the focus is on the study of mankind and its cultures. Cyber-ethnography as a research methodology is part of the move to reconceptualise the traditional notion of ‘the field’ as adopted by ethnographers. In cyberspace, the boundaries of the observed field are both virtual and free from location in place and geography. As people conduct more activities online and leave digital tracks (pictures, blogs, emails, and such), researchers have begun to study human behaviour in cyberspace. Cyber-ethnographers participate in and observe blogs, web sites, and chat rooms. They analyse how people form social networks or groups [behave] online and establish cultural identity.” [11]

In the Bulgarian scholarly tradition, Ivanka Mavrodieva explores cyber ethnography from a theoretical and applied perspective and shares the results of deploying this research method in studying various online / virtual phenomena. She emphasises that cyber ethnography allows to research the specifics of communication in online environments, to establish how identities are constructed in digital environments, to analyse the behaviour of virtual audiences on the basis of multimodal digital data, to observe social practices in platforms and networks and to study discourse, identity and interaction online (Mavrodieva, 2025). [12] The researchers report on findings gathered through cyber ethnogra­phy in a number of papers, among which findings related to students’ communicative behaviour in online classes (Mavrodieva, 2020) [13]; to rhetoric training in a virtual environment (Mavrodieva, 2021) and a mix of training and stage speech (Kardashevska, 2021). [14] Rangelov (2021) also emphasises the importance of cyber ethnography as a kind of ethnographic qualitative research method, which belongs to the interpretive/constructivist perspective and is used to describe, understand and interpret social phenomena. [15]

Practical implications of employing cyber ethnography in the tertiary classroom

In her book “English for Communication in EU Institutions”, Tsvetkova (2018) argues that in the context of European Studies at Sofia University, where students study at least two foreign languages to a level that allows them to understand and interpret EU documents, EU law, EU media communications, to prepare for participation in international negotiations, creation, promotion and implementation of EU policies, etc., developing students’ intercultural compe­tence should be viewed as integral to an educational continuum spanning all levels of education. [16] This is illustrated in the figure below. (Figure 1 is proposed by the author in her monograph “English for Communication in EU Institutions” (2018) and is translated for the purposes of the current paper. Figures 2-6 contain screenshots – parts of students’ accounts of their cyber ethnographic presentations in the period 2015-2026.)

Figure 1. Potential for developing European Studies

students’ intercultural competence

The majority of European Studies students at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski come from secondary schools where intensive foreign language study is carried out, and both at school and during their studies at the bachelor’s level, they have the opportunity to interact with students from other EU countries. As Tsvetkova notes, they possess a “relatively high level of intercultural communicative competence, they are ready to withhold their judgement in situations involving intercultural communication. They are also able to critically evaluate the use of English in international settings and display empathy and readiness to engage in interacting with the “unknown”. (Tsvetkova, 2026) [17]. Therefore, the educational environment allows for combining the potential of language teaching in the European Studies programme with other disciplines on the curriculum to foster both their intercultural competence and intercultural citizenship skills, which would ensure that students are not only well-prepared in foreign languages, but are also intercultural speakers able to mediate between their own and other cultures and between cultures more broadly.

 

From ethnography to cyber ethnography

In more concrete terms, students are introduced first to ethnography as a method to research cultures as well as to some basic data-collection procedures with a particular emphasis on participant observation as an important tool enabling one to learn about a culture by participating in the daily activities of its members while observing and recording their behaviour (Spradley, 1980). [18] They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of doing participant observation and the potential situations to which they can apply it. To keep the activity straightforward and easy to implement, it is important to suggest that learners focus on situations which are close to their personal and/or university experiences such as attending a family function, being present at a lecture, at a conference, etc. They should be advised to choose a setting and a situation they would like to study, to formulate a research question, and then be given instructions which can be “translated” into a checklist to help them stay focused while doing the participant observation. The latter can include looking out for aspects such as what the event is, where it takes place, who is involved in it and what their roles are, what actions and what order the participants take, what they say, what language is used, what dress code is observed, etc. These guiding questions should be prepared in advance and negotiated with the teacher. The participant observation can be done independently or in pairs. The students are advised to write a concise account of their participant observation soon after it takes place. They are also warned against the use of emotive language. In case the activity is done in pairs, the notes should be compared before writing up a consolidated account. Then the results are shared and discussed in class with a view to what the participant observation has taught the students about the specific situation they have analysed and the cultural traits revealed in it.

When it comes to preparing students to do cyber ethnography, a similar sequence of activities can be followed individually or in pairs as outlined below.

  • First, students get acquainted with cyber ethnography as a method ap­plied in studying cultures online.
  • Second, they are provided with some examples of cyber ethnographic research.
  • They are asked to share what social media they use, what online communities they are members of, etc.
  • In order to help them decide on how to conduct their cyber ethnographic observation, the teacher introduces the term “lurker” which is associated with passive behaviour online. A lurker is someone who does not in­teract but merely absorbs information on the internet and the term is often used with a negative connotation, however, a lurker can be actively engaged through reading, learning, information gathering, and com­munity observation (Edelmann, 2013). The researcher contends that lurking should be recognised as a legitimate and valuable form of online participation rather than simply non-participation. [19] The teacher then draws comparison between doing participant observation face-to-face and online.
  • Next, students are asked to select the social media, social network, an online special interest group, etc., and to decide what exactly they would like to monitor, i.e. the types of posts and their modality – text, photo, video, audio, the turn taking in the comments to a post, the types of participants in the specific online environment and how they interact with one another, the language they use, etc. After that they are asked to formulate a research question which will help them to focus on the particular object of their research.
  • They are advised to conduct their online monitoring in the course of 7–10 days according to the parameters they have chosen and to record their observations regularly by taking screenshots and keeping something like a diary of their observation.
  • After the cyber ethnographic observation is over, they go through the collected material and analyse it.
  • They prepare a short visual presentation of the results of their research (computer presentation, video, collage, etc. and a short written account which they share and discuss in class.

Results of students performing cyber ethnography

Based on the results presented by students in class, some conclusions about their interests in online communication and about their participation in online communities can be drawn. The visuals used below are part of students’ presentations with names and photos deleted to keep the identity of the people inter­acting with the examined posts. The most commonly studied social networks are Facebook, X (Twitter) and more recently, Instagram and TickTock. Reddit is also sometimes chosen as students perceive it as a platform which provides opportunities for online collaboration on a variety of topics.

Thematically, the first and most often chosen type of the cyber ethno­graphic observation concerns analysing the means by which political leaders at the

  1. national,l

Figure 2. Screenshots of some recent post by the Bulgarian politician

Kostadin Kostadinov and the comments that follow

  1. at the EU

Figure 3. Federica Mogherini’s tweet and retweet on former Twitter in her capacity

as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

  1. and at global level communicate with their followers.

Figure 4. A tweet about the American Healthcare Act

by the GOP (Grand Old Party – the traditional nickname

of the US Republican Party) during Trump’s first presidential term

The second type of cyber ethnographic observation is performed in online groups related to a broad range of human interests such as living in a particular place or travel.

Figure 5. A post in the Facebook group Brighton People

More recently, over the past two years, some students are turning their attention to special interest groups on Reddit.

 

Figure 6. A sequence of posts on Reddit in a discussion devoted

to ChatGPT (r/ChatGPT)

Regarding the research questions students set themselves, these can be grouped in the following main groups:

1) What communication modalities prevail in a certain online group or a post and the subsequent comments;

2) What types of participants (in terms of age, educational background, political affiliation, personal interests) contribute to the discussions;

3) How the language means in a post (i.e. word choice, style and register, figurative language, exaggeration, irony and/or sarcasm, etc.) influence its read­ers.

Discussion

It is important to note that the Intercultural Relations course referred to in the current paper is based on a balance between theoretical input and tasks in which students can apply the theoretical thought they have been familiarised with. Thus, equipped with relevant theoretical frameworks concerning cultures, intercultural communication, identity creation, etc., and with the knowledge about implementing cyber ethnography, students reach relevant conclusions about the nature of the communication, the participants’ roles and the sig­nificance of the linguistic and rhetorical means employed in the particular online exchanges which are studied.

It is also noteworthy that in the past academic year, the students have shown an interest in whether the “conversation flow” observed by them is “natural” or directed by the “algorithm” and this most probably is due to the fact they also study about misinformation and disinformation in other disciplines and are adopting a more critical stance towards online content as a result. Therefore, more focused synergies with other disciplines dealing with mis/disinformation, media analysis, etc., should be sought in the future.

Conclusion

To summarise, cyber ethnography has proved to be an engaging means of getting deeper in the nature of online communities, communication with various audiences and participants in digital environments, identity building and creating a sense of belonging to such virtual groups. It helps to sensitise students to their own and others’ culturally-conditioned behaviour online. Performing cyber ethnography helps students to critically analyse online communities, platforms and cultures. The author’s experience in involving students in such tasks is useful in understanding online identities and behaviours, enhancing students’ quali­tative research skills and in promoting greater self-awareness and cultural sensitivity. It also alerts them to ethics issues such as conforming with GDPR requirements and anonymising the collected research samples.

If we go back to the idea that a university course in intercultural relations should be considered in the richness of the educational experience at the tertiary level, we cannot miss to note that the described approach can be used in other educational and research settings and across disciplines such as education, sociology, anthropology, media studies, marketing, and information sciences. It can be used not only to provide meaningful knowledge acquisition, skills and attitudes development within a specific academic programme but also across academic programmes and fields and future avenues of researching the use of cyber ethnography in university courses can focus more on creating such cross-curricular teaching-and-learning sequences.

Acknowledgements: The paper is written under the project financed by BNSF, No. КП-06-КОСТ/31, within the COST Action CA22121 Rising nationalisms, shifting geopolitics and the future of European higher education/research openness (OPEN).

Citations and Notes

[1] Woodin, J., Castro, P., & Lundgren, U. (2020). Internationalisation and higher education: Questions from an educationalist/intercultural dialogue perspective. In U. Lundgren, P. Castro, & J. Woodin (Eds.), Educational approaches to interna­tionalization through intercultural dialogue: Reflections on theory and practice (pp. 211–226). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429444289-16.

[2] Woodin, J., Castro, P., & Lundgren, U. (2020). Internationalisation and higher education: Questions from an educationalist/intercultural dialogue perspective. In U. Lundgren, P. Castro, & J. Woodin (Eds.), Educational approaches to inter­nation­alization through intercultural dialogue: Reflections on theory and practice (pp. 211–226). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429444289-16.

[3] Deardorff, D. K., & Arasaratnam-Smith, L. A. (Eds.). (2017). Intercultural Com­petence in Higher Education: International Approaches, Assessment and Applica­tion. Routledge.

Woodin, J., Castro, P., & Lundgren, U. (2020). Internationalisation and higher education: Questions from an educationalist/intercultural dialogue perspective. In U. Lundgren, P. Castro, & J. Woodin (Eds.), Educational approaches to internation­­alization through intercultural dialogue: Reflections on theory and practice (pp. 211–226). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429444289-16.

Parsons, M., Mammadova, T., Karaasenova, D., & Paradiz, M. (2026 – in press). Navigating virtual exchange: Toward cross-cultural learning experiences and language growth. In T. J. Allen & T. Mammadova (Eds.), Educators in facilitating international mobility. Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

[4] OECD. (2018). Preparing Our Youth for an Inclusive and Sustainable World: The OECD PISA Global Competence Framework. OECD Publishing.

[5] Council of Europe. (2018). Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture: Volume 1 – Context, concepts and model. Council of Europe Publishing.

[6] Barrett, M. (2020) The Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture: Policy context, content and impact”, London Review of Education 18(1), 1–17. doi: https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.18.1.01.

[7] Byram, M. (2009). Intercultural competence in foreign languages: The intercultural speaker and the pedagogy of foreign language education. In D. K. Deardorff (Ed.), The Sage handbook of intercultural competence (pp. 321–332). Los Angeles: Sage.

Wilkinson, J. (2012). The intercultural speaker and the acquisition of intercultural/ global competence. In J. Jackson (Ed.). The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication (pp. 296–309). London: Routledge.

Wagner, M., Cardetti, F. & Byram, M. (2018). The humble linguist: Interdisciplinary perspectives on teaching intercultural citizenship. In: Luef, E. M. & Marin, M. M. (Eds.). The talking species: Perspectives on the evolutionary, neuronal and cultural foundations of language. (pp 423–447). Graz: UniPress Graz Verlag GmbH.

[8] Agar, M. H. (1980). The professional stranger: An informal introduction to ethnography. Academic Press.

[9] Wilken, L. (2008). Globalization, cultural understanding and the challenges for intercultural communication. In H. Kotthoff & H. Spencer-Oatey (Eds.). Handbook of Intercultural Communication. Mouton de Gruyter.

[10] Roberts, C., Byram, M., Barro, A., Jordan, S., & Street, B. (2001). Language learners as ethnographers. Multilingual Matters.

[11] Keeley-Browne, E. (2011). Cyber-Ethnography: The Emerging Research Approach for 21st Century Research Investigation. In G. Kurubacak & T. Yuzer (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Transformative Online Education and Liberation: Models for Social Equality (pp. 330–238). IGI Global Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/ 10.4018/978-1-60960-046-4.ch017.

[12] Мавродиева, И. (2025). Езикови, комуникативни и дискурсивни особености на подкасти в България. Езиков свят-Orbis Linguarum23(3), 59–70. [Mavrodieva, I. (2025). Ezikovi, komunikativni i diskursivni osobenosti na podkasti v Bulgaria. Ezikov svyat Orbis Linguarum23(3), 59–70.]

[13] Мавродиева, И. Т. (2020). Коммуникативное поведение студентов в вирту­альном классе. Психоло­гия человека в образовании2(3), 247–256. [Mavrodieva, I. T. (2020). Kommunikativnoe povedenie studentov v virtualynom klasse. Psiho­logia cheloveka v obrazovanii, 2(3), 247–256.]

[14] Мавродиева, И. (2021). Обучение по (нови) реторични жанрове и формати във виртуална среда. Реторика и комуникации през 21. век: теории, методи, прак­тики. София: Институт по реторика и комуникации, 258–272. DOI: 10.55206/ EUUL7476. [Mavrodieva, I. (2021). Obuchenie po (novi) retorichni zhanrove i for­mati vav virtualna sreda. Retorika i komunikatsii prez 21. vek: teorii, metodi, prak­tiki. Sofia: Institut po retorika i komunikatsii, 258–272. DOI: 10.55206/ EUUL7476.]

Кардашевска, В. (2021). Особености на смесената форма на обучение (при­съствена и онлайн) по практическите дисциплини „Правоговор“ и „Сценична реч“, Реторика и комуникации през 21. век: теории, методи, практики. София: Институт по реторика и комуникации, 236–257. DOI: 10.55206/EUUL7476. [Kardashevska, V. (2021). Osobenosti na smesenata forma na obuchenie (prisastvena i onlayn) po prakticheskite distsiplini „Pravogovor“ i „Stsenichna rech“, Retorika i komunikatsii prez 21. vek: teorii, metodi, praktiki. Sofia: Institut po retorika i komu­nikatsii, 236–257. DOI: 10.55206/EUUL7476.]

[15] Рангелов, С. (2025). Преподаване на предмети по регионални изследвания в международна среда: културни особености и комуникационни предизвика­телства. Реторика и комуникации, бр. 65, 217–230. DOI 10.55206/OZDD1498. https://rhetoric.bg/. Retrieved on 10.05.2026. [Rangelov, S. (2025). Prepodavane na predmeti po regionalni izsledvania v mezhdunarodna sreda: kulturni osobenosti i komunikatsionni predizvikatelstva. Retorika i komunikatsii, br. 65, 217–230. DOI 10.55206/OZDD1498. https://rhetoric.bg/. Retrieved on 10.05.2026.]

[16] Цветкова, Н. (2018). Ан­глийски език за комуникация в институциите на ЕС. Теоретико-приложни аспекти. УИ „Св. Климент Охридски“. София. [Tsvet­kova, N. (2018). Angliyski ezik za komunikatsia v institutsiite na ES. Te­ore­tiko-prilozhni aspekti. UI „Sv. Kliment Ohridski“, Sofia.]

[17] Tsvetkova, N. (2026). Fostering Multilingualism and Intercultural Dialogue at the Tertiary Level. Foreign Language Teaching53(1), 102, 110.

[18] Spradley, J. (1980). Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rineart and WinSton, Inc.

[19] Edelmann, N. (2013). Reviewing the definitions of “lurkers” and some implications for online research. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking16(9), 645–649.

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Assoc. Prof. Nikolina Tsvetkova, PhD. Nikolina Tsvetkova is an Associate Professor at the European Studies Department, Faculty of Philosophy at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She currently teaches English for Specific Purposes, Intercultural Relations, Introduction to Multilingualism in the EU, and Project Termi­nology to bachelor and master students at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Faculty of Philosophy. She holds a PhD in Education (Methodology of teaching English). Her research interests include intercultural communication, Internet communication, social networks, applied linguistics, European dimensions of education. She has been involved in teaching English and teacher training for more than 30 years now. She has authored course books for teaching English at the primary, lower and upper secondary in Bulgaria as well as a number of research papers, book chapters and a monograph in in the field of intercultural communication, digital academic communication and applied linguistics. Among these are English for Communication at EU Institutions: Theoretical and Practical Aspects (2018) and articles published in prestigious journals.

Ръкописът е изпратен на 01.06.2026 г.

Рецензиране от двама независими рецензенти: от 02.06.2026 до 07.07.2026 г.

Приемане за публикуване: 08.07.2026 г.

Manuscript was submitted: 01.06.2026.

Double Blind Peer Reviews: from 02.06.2026 till 07.07.2026.

Accepted: 08.07.2026.

Брой 68 на сп. „Реторика и комуникации“ (юли 2026 г.) се издава с финансова­та помощ на Фонд научни изследвания, договор № КП-06-НП7/23 от 08 декември 2025 г.

Issue 68 of the Rhetoric and Communications Journal (July 2026) is published with the financial support of the Scientific Research Fund, Contract No. KP-06-NP7/23 of December 08, 2025.