Teachers probably don’t think very highly of Instagram in general. You hear about students going viral for all the wrong reasons. One glimpse of someone’s personal life can be taken completely out of context and become fodder for gossip and social drama. We already know that today’s learners are technologically savvy and spend a good amount of their free time in front of screens navigating various social spheres. But what if we challenged them to peer outside of their chosen surroundings? What if we could implement Instagram as a tool for promoting intercultural learning in the classroom?

It is likely that our students (like most Instagram users) follow their friends, possibly family members, and favorite artists and celebrities. This ‘circle’ comprises a cultural database for the user. By constantly scrolling through their personalized feed of images, the user is inadvertently absorbing the ‘culture’ of their timeline. This culture is comprised of many factors – people’s activities, geographical location, socioeconomic status, hashtags and emoji, jokes, filters applied, and of course the images themselves. Students probably do not realize their exposure to social media makes them veritable sponges for culture – they have an innate way of internalizing and processing it through new modalities. Let’s explore some options of how to capitalize on this unique perception.

Instagram could certainly be incorporated into a classroom to promote interculturality as well as critical media literacy. Bearing in mind that there is plenty of content on Instagram that isn’t school-appropriate, it would be up to the teacher’s judgment whether to implement these projects in school or as homework. (Many schools have a no-phone policy, or their networks block access to Instagram – so homework is probably more applicable.) It would also be up to the teacher as to which age group should take on a project in this medium – probably no younger than 8th grade.

One idea could be applied in a social studies or history classroom. This could be an individual or cooperative learning project with the possibility for presentation to the class. It could be displayed on posters in the hall and be conducive to a gallery walk, or presented to the class digitally. The initial step would be to search for hashtags associated with a recent event/issue covered heavily (or not!) in the mainstream media, i.e. #BlackLivesMatter, #PlannedParenthood, etc. The next phase would be to give a brief summary of the issue and to choose salient (school-appropriate) images and other hashtags that are relevant to the issue. These pieces of evidence would help the students summarize the ‘Instagram culture’ surrounding the issue. Are voices unified? What seem to be the main perspectives surrounding the issue? Does any one user, post, quote, etc. speak to you in particular? From here, the students could create a ‘culture map’ of celebrities, politicians, journalists, and other public voices that are involved in coverage. Finally, they could choose a mainstream media source’s coverage of the issue and contrast their ‘instragram culture summary’ with this source’s bias and slant. There could be the possibility for ‘rewriting’ the mainstream news as well.

Another idea is for a foreign language classroom. This too could be either individual or group work with the possibility of presentation. Students would choose a city/country that interests them that speaks the target language, and similar to the social studies project, create a culture map and summary from the information they gather. They could possibly even try to start conversations with speakers of the target language and ask them questions to gain information for the culture profile (this would require teacher discretion and student maturity, as well as a certain proficiency in the target language. Perhaps it could tie into a lesson about that language’s digital shorthand and different registers of formality in language). Again, the project would culminate in some kind of comparative presentation – perhaps how American media/American Instragram users view and portray a certain country or culture compared to members of that culture. (How many times can I use the word culture in this post?)
I do believe it’s important for us (as educators) to stay familiar with the media that our students interact with and know what’s relevant to them as well as what they consume on a daily basis. I would hope that these projects could inspire students to become more conscious, aware consumers of media and perhaps also incite an interest in global affairs and different perspectives around the world.