28. Sociologies of Education
Paper
Student Influencers on Social Media: Money, Academic Capital and Identity Development
Rille Raaper1, Mariann Hardey2, Samar Aad3
1Durham University, United Kingdom; 2Durham University, United Kingdom; 3Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Presenting Author: Raaper, Rille
This project focuses on student influencers on social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and the Little Red Book. It is widely known that students inhabit digital spaces. However, there is a limited understanding of how some students become influencers and the role that social media plays in shaping their student experiences and identity development and wider cultural reference points. It is known that students’ experience of higher education and their identities are increasingly digitally situated (Dyer 2020; Timmis et al. 2016). This is especially as current university-age students entering university will have been raised in a time of open access to internet, personal computers and rapid information delivery and consumption. This means that the ways in which students establish and enact their student experience and identity, as well as how they experience, negotiate and understand university as a social, academic and physical space is mediated through myriad of possibilities presented by technology.
Furthermore, from the start of their studies to the end of three years, university students go through various transitions in their identity formation. This paper takes a spatio-temporal approach to identity, emphasising the interaction between studenthood, youth culture and digital platforms. Such emphasis is vital when social media is constantly evolving with new ways to express oneself and where the student population has become younger, resulting in overlapping pressures between studenthood and youth transitions. The WHO has also announced the mental health crisis among students (Harvard Medical School n.d.), making the interaction between social media on student wellbeing pressing to explore.
This paper is centred around the following research questions:
- What are the competing narratives (produced through discourses, visuals) that construct student identities in digital spaces?
- How do these narratives differ across student lifecycle (e.g. transitioning in/out of university), background (e.g. gender, social class, ethnicity) and digital platforms used?
This project starts with the premise that identities are formed intersubjectively, through relations with others, and in our interaction with the material and virtual world. To fully appreciate the role of digital spaces in forming student identities, it is important to understand the pressures that students as young people experience in today’s society. The shift from knowledge society to digital society has been producing uncertain futures for young people with new challenges for identity construction (Bynner & Heinz 2021). For example, one is expected to sell their unwanted belongings on eBay, develop a start-up or become an Uber driver rather than rely on state support in times of need. Students are also treated as consumers, purchasing education as any other commodity (Brooks & Abrahams 2018; Raaper 2021). It is thus unsurprising that social media promotes an image of the self as an enterprise. We also argue that the psychological pressures students experience have been amplified by Covid-19, raising attention to youth unemployment and mental health disorders (Hellemans et al. 2020; Partington 2020) and creating concerns for social media addiction (Tarrant 2021).
We conceptualise social media as virtual spaces of collective knowledge/content production, and as contexts where identities are shaped relationally out of interaction with other users and the platforms themselves (Chen 2016; Braidotti 2013). Digital participatory cultures produce ‘new forms of power, status and control’ (Jenkins et al. 2016, 12) but are also themselves co-produced by the ‘imagined community’ of users (cf. Anderson 1991; Miller 2011). Part of our ambition will then be to investigate the ways students forge assemblages with electronic technologies and how they interact with other users and politico-economic structures that shape the formation of their identities.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis project uses a combination of innovative methods to generate and analyse data. By engaging with discursive (language, text, content) and visual elements (temporal organisation, image, camerawork, sound), it is possible to examine recurring narratives and aesthetic structures through which student identities are constructed and performed (Holmes 2017).
The sample used in this paper involves ten UK-based student influencers whose following on TikTok/Instagram/Little Red Book ranges between 2000 to 800,000 followers. These influencers were selected through using purposive and snowball sampling. They include both undergraduate and postgraduate students from home and international student status. As part of this project, we have engaged with the student influencers’ social media posts and conducted follow-up individual interviews.
First, to analyse the content of social media posts, we use software engineering and computational analysis to identify core patterns within a particular student influencer portfolio as well as patterns across the sample. The analysis will include the systematic mapping of the reach of content, primary language processing, content analysis of social media posts, and sentiment analysis. Guided by digital ethnography (cf. Pink et.al. 2015), we further conduct manual analysis of social media posts, exploring the meanings of content, and the elliptic and poetic capacities of the posts. Methodological cues from the field of visual anthropology will be employed to explore hegemonic representations of the self, communicated and perpetuated through pictorial modes.
Second, we present the findings of follow-up individual interviews with these ten student influencers to explore the less visible aspects of social media use and the issues of self-actualisation, wellbeing and future transitions. Data is being analysed by using the combination of critical discourse analysis and thematic analysis. The project introduced as part of this paper has been approved by the XXX University Ethics Committee, and it complies with the BERA (2018) ethical guidelines on digital research. We will assure full on anonymity of our participants and no student influencer will be identified from this conference paper.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOur findings will demonstrate how students in the UK become influencers on social media, and how their social media practices and interactions with followers shape their wider sense of self, identity development and belonging. For example, we will demonstrate how student influencers with disabilities or from LGBTQ+ background construct their identities in relation to being a student and a young person from a minority background. We will also discuss how international students in the UK maintain their sense of ethnic belonging and friendship groups through their social media practices.
In addition to themes related to student and youth identities, we will present findings related to monetisation of student influencer profiles, and the ways in which these students have capitalised their student experience and academic skills and produce content that is highly relevant for future and current students. Many brands and marketing companies regularly approach these student influencers for marketing and advertisement work. We will present and discuss how our interviewees navigate this complex space and the income they generate (e.g., often £500-£2000 for a short TikTok video) through their social media practices.
This research topic on student influencers is highly unique, bringing together youth and studenthood that are likely to overlap when shaping identity construction and performance in digital spaces. Our ambitious theoretical and methodological approach helps to critique the traditional ideas of digital nativism that present contemporary youth as holding an authoritative role in using digital technologies, and we show that their identity development is complex, intersecting with youth transitions as well as monetisation that comes from private sector. It is also important to note that our focus is on image-rich real-time digital platforms, which we believe are particularly important for problematising further links with student wellbeing and mental health.
ReferencesAnderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
BERA (2018). Ethical guidelines for educational research. Available online at: www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018
Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brooks R. & Abrahams, J. (2018). Higher education students as consumers? Evidence from England. In. A., Tarabini & N. Ingram (Eds.), Educational Choices, Aspirations and Transitions in Europe: Systemic, Institutional and Subjective Constraints. Oxon: Routledge.
Bynner, J., & Heinz, W. (2021). Youth prospects in the digital society: Identities and inequalities in an unravelling Europe. Policy Press.
Chen, C.P. (2016). Forming digital self and parasocial relationships on YouTube. Journal of Consumer Culture 16(1), 232–254.
Dyer, H. T. (2020). The role of technology in shaping student identity during transitions to university. In L. P. Rajendran & N. D. Odeleye (Eds.), Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures (pp. 97–113). Springer International Publishing
Miller, D. (2011). Tales from Facebook. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Harvard Medical School (n.d.). The WHO World Mental Health International College Student (WMH-ICS) Initiative. Available at: https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/wmh/college_student_survey.php
Hellemans, K., Abizaid, A., Gabrys, R., McQuaid, R. & Patterson, Z. (2020). For university students, COVID-19 stress creates perfect conditions for mental health crises. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/for-university-students-covid-19-stress-creates-perfect-conditions-for-mental-health-crises-149127
Holmes, S. (2017). ‘My anorexia story’: girls constructing narratives of identity on YouTube. Cultural Studies 31(1), 1-23.
Jenkins, H., Ito, M. & Boyd, D. (2016). Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Patrington, R. (2020). Covid generation: UK youth unemployment 'set to triple to 80s levels'. The Guardian, 7th October 2020. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/07/covid-generation-uk-youth-unemployment-set-to-triple-to-80s-levels
Pink, S., Horst, H., Postill, J., Hjorth, L., Lewis, T. and Tacchi, J. (2015). Digital ethnography: Principles and practice. Sage.
Raaper, R. (2021). Students as ‘Animal Laborans’? Tracing student politics in a marketised higher education setting. Sociological Research Online, 26(1), 130-146.
Tarrant, K. (2021). How to avoid a student gambling and gaming crisis. Wonkhe. Available at: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/how-to-avoiding-a-student-gambling-and-gaming-crisis/
Timmis, S., Yee, W. C., & Bent, E. (2016). Digital diversity and belonging in higher education: A social justice proposition. In E-learning & social media: education and citizenship for the digital 21st Century (pp. 297-320). Information Age Publishing.
28. Sociologies of Education
Paper
Unsavoury Aspects of Student Voice
Craig Skerritt
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Skerritt, Craig
Student voice is, of course, fundamental – who could argue against democracy? It is important that we do not return to a time where students were seen and not heard and positioned as subordinate figures but at the same time, do teachers suffer because of this democracy? Although student voice policies can represent positive developments, it would be naïve to be overly celebratory of pro-voice policies. I share the view of Amanda Keddie that despite presumptions that student voice is a positive notion we must view it critically (Keddie 2015). Critical researchers have an obligation to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions (Holloway 2021) and this paper, as elsewhere (Skerritt, O’Hara, and Brown 2021), is intended to build on critical scholarship that highlights some unsavoury aspects of student voice (see for example Page 2015, 2016, 2017a, 2017b; Charteris and Smardon 2019a, 2019b; Black and Mayes 2020; Skerritt 2020).
Influenced by sociologists such as Carol Vincent and Stephen Ball, I feel it is important that my position in relation to this research is made explicit (Vincent and Ball 2006) and I will ‘place’ myself in relation to it (Vincent and Ball 2007) by acknowledging who I am, my background, and my connection to it. Research comes with, for example, stories and histories that shape our work (McDermott 2020) and I expound my own in an autoethnographic account. What is coined the ‘I(nterest) behind this research’ means that student voice is not taken at face value or as an unquestionably positive initiative but something that can, even unintentionally, be more sinister. There is no claim to objectivity here, and it is subjectivity that comes to the fore – major emphasis is placed on my own experiences shaping my outlook.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe data I present come from interviews I conducted with 55 school staff in seven post-primary schools. In being asked questions about the ways that student voice takes place in their schools, interviewees were also asked about the state of and attitudes towards student voice in their schools, if it was currently being used, or had the potential to be used, to monitor teachers, and there were also future-oriented questions about how they would feel about the possibility of students being asked about teacher performance going forward. My analysis of the data is what Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke and colleagues call ‘reflexive thematic analysis’ (Braun et al. 2018; Braun and Clarke 2019). It is creative, reflexive, and subjective and is about interpreting and creating meaning as opposed to discovering or finding the ‘truth’ that is ‘out there’ or in the data (Braun and Clarke 2019, 591). As a critical scholar, I play an active role in knowledge production here:
The researcher is a storyteller, actively engaged in interpreting data through the lens of their own cultural membership and social positionings, their theoretical assumptions and ideological commitments, as well as their scholarly knowledge. This subjective, even political, take on research is very different to a positivist-empiricist model of the researcher (Braun et al. 2018, 6).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsJenny Ozga reminds us that the sociology of education can help us to unveil masked forms of power (Ozga 2021) and I will use qualitative data here to lay out three key issues vis-à-vis student voice in schools: it can be used for surveillance; it can give rise to suspicion; and it can stigmatise dissenters. This may, in time, lead to more critical research that explores, for example, both the awareness and ignorance school staff have of surveillance; what is being done with the data obtained through unintentional surveillance; the emotional effects of student voice on school staff; and the views of a wide variety of teachers on student voice, such as early career teachers and more experienced teachers.
ReferencesBlack, R., & Mayes, E. (2020). Feeling voice: The emotional politics of ‘student voice’ for teachers. British Educational Research Journal, 46(5), 1064-1080.
Charteris, J., & Smardon, D. (2019a). Student voice in learning: instrumentalism and tokenism or opportunity for altering the status and positioning of students? Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 27(2), 305-323.
Charteris, J., & Smardon, D. (2019b). The politics of student voice: unravelling the multiple discourses articulated in schools. Cambridge Journal of Education, 49(1), 93-110.
Holloway, J. (2021). Teachers and teaching:(re) thinking professionalism, subjectivity and critical inquiry. Critical Studies in Education, 62(4), 411-421.
Keddie, A. (2015). Student voice and teacher accountability: possibilities and problematics. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(2), 225-244.
McDermott, M. (2020). On What Autoethnography Did in a Study on Student Voice Pedagogies: A Mapping of Returns. Qualitative Report, 25(2), 347-358.
Ozga, J. (2021). Problematising policy: The development of (critical) policy sociology. Critical Studies in Education, 62(3), 290-305.
Page, D. (2015). The visibility and invisibility of performance management in schools. British Educational Research Journal, 41(6), 1031-1049.
Page, D. (2016). Understanding performance management in schools: A dialectical approach. International Journal of Educational Management. 30(2), 166-176.
Page, D. (2017a). The surveillance of teachers and the simulation of teaching. Journal of Education Policy, 32(1), 1-13.
Page, D. (2017b). Conceptualising the surveillance of teachers. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(7), 991-1006.
Skerritt, C. (2020). School autonomy and the surveillance of teachers. International Journal of Leadership in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2020.1823486
Skerritt, C., O’Hara, J. & Brown, M. (2021). Researching how student voice plays out in relation to classroom practice in Irish post-primary schools: a heuristic device. Irish Educational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2021.1964564
Vincent, C., & Ball, S. J. (2006). Childcare, Choice and Class Practices: Middle-class Parents and their Children. Oxon: Routledge.
Vincent, C., & Ball, S. J. (2007). ‘Making up’ the middle-class child: Families, activities and class dispositions. Sociology, 41(6), 1061-1077.
28. Sociologies of Education
Paper
Dissemination of Conspiracy Theories about the War in Ukraine among Youth
Johannes Schuster1, Lea Fobel1, Nina Kolleck2
1Leipzig University, Germany; 2University of Potsdam, Germany
Presenting Author: Schuster, Johannes;
Kolleck, Nina
Conspiracy theories pose a major threat to democracy and cohesion in society because they undermine trust in state institutions and jeopardize the credibility of scientific knowledge (Mancosu et al. 2017). Social crises such as the war in Ukraine serve as a particular breeding ground for conspiracy theories (Lamberty et al. 2022). Among young people in particular, it is therefore a key task of the education system to counteract the spread of conspiracy theories. In order to undertake targeted educational policy measures, it is important to identify factors that promote the spread of such narratives among adolescents. However, studies to date have primarily focused on adults (for a review, see Douglas et al. 2019). This study addresses this research gap with the following research question: What social and political factors promote the emergence of conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine among youth?
Primarily social psychological research on factors conducive to conspiracy theories distinguishes between psychological and socio-political factors. The first group includes psychological disorders such as negative attitudes toward authority, low self-esteem, and even schizotypal personality disorders. The second group describes demographic factors and personal values and attitudes, making it particularly relevant to educational science. The literature on determinants of conspiracy theories among adults shows that especially people who feel socially excluded, have low income, or belong to marginalized groups (e.g., Muslims) are prone to conspiracy theories (Uenal 2016; Uscinski & Parent 2014; Wilson & Rose 2013). In addition, supporters of far-right parties as well as individuals with a strong national identity and a great distrust in political institutions show high approval ratings for conspiracy theories (Edelson et al. 2017; Imhoff & Bruder 2014). Finally, some authors emphasize the importance of historical context (Nattrass 2013). Based on these findings on adults, we derive the following hypotheses on the prevalence of conspiracy theories on the Ukraine war among adolescents:
H1: Adolescents who feel socially marginalized are more inclined to conspiracy theories.
H2: Adolescents with perceived low income are more inclined to conspiracy theories.
H3: Muslim youth are more likely to engage in conspiracy theories.
H4: Adolescents who are supporters of the far-right party “Alternative für Deutschland” (alternative for Germany) (H4a) and adolescents with a pronounced national identity (H4b) are more likely to engage in conspiracy theories.
H5: The greater the distrust in political institutions among young people, the greater the belief in conspiracy theories.
H6: East German youths are more inclined to conspiracy theories than West German youths.
The aim of the article is to use the example of the current war in Europe to show what dangers current political developments can pose for the development and deepening of conspiracy beliefs among young people and thus for democracy. In view of the political developments in many European countries, the results are not only relevant for Germany and can be transferred in parts to other national contexts.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe present study was conducted among young people between the ages of 16 and 29 in Germany between June 24 and July 26, 2022. The data was collected online with the support of a survey institute. The sample is quota-representative for all federal states and includes N=3240 persons. For the survey of belief in conspiracy theories in the context of the Ukraine war, items from a representative survey among adults were used (Lamberty et al. 2022). Examples include “Putin is made a scapegoat for everything by the West in order to distract from the real problems” and “Western media can no longer be trusted when they report on the war in Ukraine”. In addition, demographic information about respondents was collected, such as religious affiliation, perceived income or geographic location. Furthermore, existing instruments were used to ask for social inclusion, national identity and trust in political institutions.
Hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model that included control variables such as age, gender, and education level in addition to the variables tested in the hypotheses. A structural equation model represents “a collection of statistical techniques that allow a set of relationships between one or more independent variables (…) and one or more dependent variables (…) to be examined” (Ullmann & Bentler 2013, p. 661). It involves multiple regression analyses and therefore allows to systematically test multiple independent variables and their relations to each other.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results of the analysis show that the calculated structural equation model has good fit measures and the model is suitable to explain proportionally the belief in conspiracy theories on the Ukraine war among youth (RMSEA=.063; CFI=.82; TLI=.80). The results confirm the hypotheses to a large extent. Thus, supporters of the Alternative für Deutschland as well as adolescents with great distrust in political institutions and a pronounced national identity show high approval ratings for conspiracy theories. The same applies to young members of marginalized religions. This is in line with previous research on marginalized groups and extends it on a specific, in this context under-researched group, in Germany. Although the direct effects of social exclusion and perceived low income are not significant, these relationships are mediated as indirect effects via distrust in institutions. Thus, in addition to confirming the expected effects for adolescents, it appears that it is precisely such mistrust in politics that is problematic among youth an increases belief in conspiracy theories. Therefore, in addition to general right-wing extremist and nationalist tendencies, it is the addressing of this lack of trust that represents a central task of citizenship education in preventing conspiracy theories. The results also point to a great general need to catch up in the area of citizenship education, especially for minority groups and the socially disadvantaged, but also for young people in eastern Germany.
ReferencesDouglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., Cichocka, A., Nefes, T., Ang, C. S. & Deravi, F. (2019). Understanding Conspiracy Theories. Political Psychology, 40(S1), 3–35.
Edelson, J., Alduncin, A., Krewson, C., Sieja, J. A. & Uscinski, J. E. (2017). The Effect of Conspiratorial Thinking and Motivated Reasoning on Belief in Election Fraud. Political Research Quarterly, 70(4), 933–946.
Imhoff, R. & Bruder, M. (2014). Speaking (Un–)Truth to Power: Conspiracy Mentality as A Generalised Political Attitude. European Journal of Personality, 28(1), 25–43.
Lamberty, P., Goedeke Tort, M. & Heuer, C. (2022). Von der Krise zum Krieg: Verschwörungserzählungen über den Angriffskrieg gegen die Ukraine in der Gesellschaft. CeMAS.
Mancosu, M., Vassallo, S. & Vezzoni, C. (2017). Believing in Conspiracy Theories: Evidence from an Exploratory Analysis of Italian Survey Data. South European Society and Politics, 22(3), 327–344.
Nattrass, N. (2013). The AIDS conspiracy: Science fights back. Columbia University Press.
Uenal, F. (2016). The Secret Islamization of Europe Exploring the Integrated Threat Theory: Predicting Islamophobic Conspiracy Stereotypes. International Journal of Conflict and VIolence, 10(1), 94–108.
Ullmann, J. B., & Bentler, P. M. (2012). Structural Equation Modeling. In I. Weiner (Ed.), Handbook of Psychology, Second Edition (pp. 661–690). Wiley.
Uscinski, J. E. & Parent, J. M. (2014). American conspiracy theories. Oxford University Press.
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