Identity, Ideology, and Practice in the Visual Grammar of Instagram Teacher-Influencers

• In Event: Interrogating, Emerging, and Developing: Teacher Identities in Flux

Abstract

Social media platforms are restructuring communication and un-making/re-making boundaries for social media users. This study of over 1200 Instagram posts from teacher ‘influencers’ (i.e., account holders with large numbers of followers) examines this restructuring for patterns of meaning-making that index newly dominant practices, ideologies, and subjectivities in the figured world (Holland et al., 2001) of teaching. Framed with Kress’s (2010) critical multimodal social semiotic approach to language and sign, we show how teachers use Instagram’s available semiotic modes to project professional identities that are deeply entangled with traditionally gendered and raced notions of teaching as well as with neoliberal ideologies of entrepreneurialism. This reimagining of professional, personal, and social boundaries signals an important shift in perceptions of the teaching profession.

Authors

• Mel M Engman, Queen's University - Belfast

• Laura Lemanski, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Leah Shepard-Carey, Drake University