Whereas research on family language policy for a long time focused on languages with two or in some cases three languages, the shift in this field of research over the past decade (Fogle & King 2013, Lomeu Gomes 2018) leads to an increased interest in a larger variety of language and family constellations as well as perspectives on multilingualism.
In translocal families, technology plays a crucial role as a means of communication with extended family abroad and as a source of additional language input. As the studies of King-O’Riain (2015) and Palviainen (2020) show, media use shapes everyday language use in multilingual families and can also contribute to language maintenance. However, further inquiry into beliefs and practices, especially in families with three or more languages, is necessary.
In this presentation, I will focus on parental beliefs on media use for communication and language acquisition. Data include individual and group interviews, observations and informal types of data. For data analysis, Situational Analysis, a post-modern version of Grounded Theory, is used.
The results from the cases of a quadri- and a pentalingual family indicate that the practices of video calls, media use and the availability of media sources such as TV programmes can be decisive for the family language policy and might even attribute to the dominance of languages.

References
King-O’Riain, R. (2015), Emotional streaming and transconnectivity: Skype and emotion practices in transnational families in Ireland. Global Networks 15: 2, 256–273.
Fogle, L. & King, K. (2013), Child Agency and Language Policy in Transnational Families. Issues in Applied Linguistics 19: 1-25.
Lomeu Gomes, R. (2018) Family Language Policy ten years on: A critical approach to family multilingualism. Multilingual Margins 5: 2, 51–72.
Palviainen, Å. (2020), Video calls as a nexus of practice in multilingual translocal families. ZiF 25: 1, 85–108. https://tujournals.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php/zif