JavaScript is Disabled
Your browser's JavaScript functionality is disabled. It has to be enabled to use this function of ConfTool.
Here you can find information on how to enable JavaScript
If you have any problems, please contact the organisers at ecer2026@eera.eu.

Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 19th Aug 2026, 21:30:12 EET

Daily Overview

Session

05 SES 05 A: ***CANCELLED*** Parents and parenting

Time:

Wednesday, 19/Aug/2026:

10:30 - 12:00

Session Chair: Anabel Corral-Granados

Location: A05 | Main building A | 0 Fl.

cap: 30

Paper Session

Presentations

05. Children and Youth at Risk and Education
Paper

***WITHDRAWN*** Parental Knowledge Production, Advocacy, and Networking around Disability, Impairment, and Chronic Illness on Instagram – Digital Ethnography of Parenting Blogs

Ramona Thümmler, Lars Dietrich

Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany

Presenting Author: Thümmler, Ramona; Dietrich, Lars

On Instagram, parent-run accounts increasingly document children’s everyday lives and developmental trajectories. A visible sub-set focuses on children with disabilities, chronic conditions, syndromes, or developmental differences and shares unusually open and emotionally dense narratives about diagnosis, support needs, encounters with professionals, and family routines. While prior work has highlighted the role of parental online narratives for coping, sense-making, and community building, less is known about how these accounts function as educational publics in which parents interpret and contest institutional practices and circulate knowledge that is meant to influence inclusion and participation.

Against the backdrop of ECER 2026’s theme Knowing and Acting, this paper conceptualises parent-run disability-related Instagram blogs as platformed sites of knowledge production and action orientation: parents do not only report experiences but also translate specialist information, articulate normative claims about inclusion, and mobilise audiences. This matters for educational research because the accounts blur boundaries between private family life and public educational discourse, and they may reshape expectations toward early childhood settings and schools.

The study addresses three research questions:

Which education-related themes (e.g., early childhood education, schooling, support and resources, rights/entitlements, participation in everyday institutions) are negotiated by parents in disability-related Instagram blogs?
How do parents position themselves vis-à-vis educational institutions and professionals (e.g., as partners, critics, advocates, “experts by experience”)?
Which knowledge claims and calls to action emerge, and how is the child represented within these educational narratives—particularly regarding vulnerability, agency, and voice?

By analysing how parents “make inclusion speakable” in a public, algorithmically curated medium, the paper contributes to research on family–school relationships and inclusive education in two ways: (a) it foregrounds parents’ digital practices as a form of educational participation and agenda-setting; and (b) it connects inclusion-related advocacy to ethical and children’s rights questions that arise when intimate child-related content becomes persistently accessible and shareable in public online spaces.

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used
The paper draws on a three-month digital ethnography of disability-related Instagram blogs run by parents. Two research accounts were created to enter relevant algorithmic “bubbles” through following practices, hashtags, and networked recommendations. Based on profiling criteria (activity level, reach/followers, thematic focus, and relevance to education-related discussions), a set of accounts was screened, and 15 german-languaged and 20 english-languaged accounts were selected for in-depth analysis.
Posts from the selected accounts were imported into MAXQDA and treated as textual material. The analysis followed qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2022), combining inductive category development with iterative refinement. Analytical memos from the ethnographic following phase were used to contextualise posts (e.g., recurring storylines, platform vernacular, and interactional dynamics such as comment-based support).
Because the material concerns children as a potentially vulnerable group and involves publicly accessible yet highly personal content, the study integrates an explicit ethical reflection: it focuses on thematic patterns rather than account-level profiling, avoids reproducing identifiable content, and discusses the implications of public accessibility and persistence for children’s privacy and participation rights.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
Across the corpus, education and participation are recurring concerns that extend beyond coping with disability. Parents repeatedly narrate encounters with early childhood centres and schools, negotiate support arrangements, and interpret “micro-events” (meetings, assessments, exclusions, successful accommodations) as evidence for broader claims about inclusive structures.
Three patterns stand out:
Ambassadorship for inclusion: Parents position themselves as inclusion advocates by explaining conditions/syndromes, translating professional knowledge, and offering practical guidance to other families. This frequently combines experiential knowledge with references to service landscapes and (social-)legal considerations.
Public problematisation of institutional shortcomings: Parents mark perceived deficits in institutional practices (e.g., inaccessible routines, insufficient support, deficit-oriented attitudes). These posts produce counter-narratives to institutional accounts and aim to shift what is recognised as “normal”, “reasonable accommodation”, and “good practice”.
Peer support and decision-making infrastructures: The platform enables networking and social support that helps parents process experiences and make educational decisions. In this sense, Instagram becomes part of an informal knowledge infrastructure around inclusion.
At the same time, the analysis highlights tensions: low barriers to participation and the possibility to “speak without being authorised” can amplify inclusion-relevant knowledge, yet the public, persistent circulation of intimate child-related content raises ethical and children’s rights questions—especially when children have limited possibilities to consent or contest representation.

References
Alanen, L. (2009): Generational order. In: Qvortrup, J.; Corsaro, W. A.; Honig, M.-S. (Hrsg.): The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies (S. 159–174). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Alig, O. (2021): Sharenting, Mama-Blogger, Kinderinfluencer & Co. – Eine rechtliche Betrachtung. BPJM Aktuell, (4), S. 9–13.
Ågren, Y. (2023): Branded childhood: Infants as digital capital on Instagram. Childhood, 30 (1), S. 9–23.
Ammari, T.; Schoenebeck, S. (2015): Networked empowerment on Facebook among parents of children with special needs. In: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2015) (S. 2805–2814). New York: ACM.
Augustin, E. (2015): BlogLife. Zur Bewältigung von Lebensereignissen in Weblogs. Bielefeld: Transcript.
DeHoff, B. A.; Staten, L. K.; Rodgers, R. C.; Denne, S. C. (2016): The role of online social support in supporting and educating parents of young children with special health care needs: A scoping review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18 (12), e333.
Gruebner, O.; van Haasteren, A.; Hug, A.; Elayan, S.; Sykora, M.; Albanese, E.; Naslund, J.; Wolf, M.; Fadda, M.; von Rhein, M. (2022): Digital platform uses for help and support seeking of parents with children affected by disabilities: Scoping review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24 (12), e37972.
Kuckartz, U.; Rädiker, S. (2024): Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung (3. Aufl.). Weinheim: Beltz Juventa.
Ruiz‐Gomez, A.; Marôpo, L.; Jorge, A. (2024): Between advocacy and commodification on Instagram: A case study of sharenting a child with disabilities. Children & Society. S. 1–20.
Seebo, R. (2023): #disabledandproud – Die Thematisierung von Behinderung als biographisches und kollektives Ereignis auf Instagram. In: Baar, S.; Hirsekorn, T.; Schweder, S. (Hrsg.): Raum. Macht. Inklusion. Inklusive Räume erforschen und entwickeln (S. 141–146). Bielefeld: Transcript.
Veloso, G. G.; Machado-Kayzuka, G. C.; Neris, R. R.; Leite, A.; Barbosa, N. G.; Frizzo, H. C. F.; Nascimento, L. C. (2024): Digital Narratives: The Impact of Instagram® on Mothers of Children with Congenital Toxoplasmosis. Children (Basel), 11 (10), 1267.
Wexler, M. G.; Dole, C. (2022): Giving care a platform. The use of Instagram by mothers of children with chronic illness. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 9 (3), S. 1–20.