Categorising inclusive education and disability narratives, actors and expertise on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter

Abstract

Social networks play a relevant role in the construction of narratives on disability and inclusive education. This paper categorises the themes of the most viral publications on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter X, with a twofold objective: to identify the social actors associated with them and to comparatively analyse the value of thematic use for the three digital platforms. Social listening techniques developed using the Twitter X API and web scraping techniques for Instagram and YouTube are applied to store the publications with the keywords education, inclusion and/or disability in Spanish and English. The database consists of 100,091 posts captured from October 2021 to September 2022, a full year. Subsequently, the 100 most viral publications from each social network are selected and a content analysis is applied. The results show a tendency towards thematic specialisation: Instagram defines the demand for rights and disseminates empathetic attitudes; YouTube collects experiences of good practices in informal contexts with a reflective function; Twitter X disseminates reports on the barriers and prejudices experienced by people with disabilities with a critical tone. The main social actors are diverse and varied with different profiles, therapists, politicians and parents with children with disabilities, among others. The impact of the narratives to face the new educational challenges that require an understanding of the network to establish long-term strategies for building a critical digital citizenship is discussed.