Double tap, double trouble: Instagram, teachers, and profit

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the performance of teacher agency amidst national financial and professional deficits in education and sheds light on the growing utilization of Instagram in elementary school contexts. To better understand teachers’ use of this social media platform, we examined the Instagram accounts of 12 highly popular and influential pre-K–6 teachers (i.e., teacher influencers). Data sources comprised over 600 visual and textual posts, which included images, captions, hashtags, and emojis, produced over 3 months in the spring of 2019. Using qualitative coding procedures that were recursive and emphasized the emergent nature of interpretation through a critical literacies framework, we documented the neoliberal teachers’ use of Instagram as a method of participation in a virtual community of practice and as a way to produce, commodify, and possibly profit from posts presented as curricula. Findings suggest that teacher influencers primarily used Instagram as a form of commodification and commerce, as educational content was promoted to users as well as methods of purchase via personal websites, Teachers Pay Teachers and other digital stores. Overall, the teacher influencers’ Instagram use revealed a convergence of complex and multiple discourses involving curriculum, racialized and/or gendered identities, and neoliberal production.