Digital composing and publishing of multimodal cultural artefacts and investment in ethnocultural maintenance

Safeguarding cultural diversity is an essential goal of education. Empowering ethnic minorities to maintain ethnic cultures contributes to cultural diversity. By allowing multiple semiotic resources for communication and identity representation and potentially connecting students with expanded audiences, digital multimodal composing affords more possibilities for action concerning ethnocultural sustenance. This study examined how participating in digital English multimodal cultural artefact creation shaped 11 undergraduate ethnic minority EFL learners’ investment in ethnocultural maintenance. It found that digital multimodal cultural artefact composing and publishing triggered the acquisition and validation of new forms of cultural capital, induced inward gaze towards one’s ethnic culture and self, and empowered learners to imagine broadened identities, which contributed to investment in ethnocultural maintenance. The findings suggest utilising digital multimodal cultural artefact creation to help ethnic minority students generate counternarratives towards more ethnically inclusive societies. Copyright © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.