Tag Archives: instagram

Why My First Intervention Failed But Also Succeeded

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It’s been a few days since the tutorial where I presented my first intervention and I’ve had plenty of time to absorb the feedback and to realise for myself why it wasn’t a good intervention.

Firstly, it didn’t answer my research question. And that’s kind of the point! A student creating a community of support for other working class students isn’t the university supporting those students. And whilst a support network is potentially needed, this isn’t the way to do it. If I wanted to progress down this road, I would need to change my research question. And right now I’m very happy with my question and it’s something that resonates with me.

Secondly, anonymity is important. If students need a safe place to vent, Instagram isn’t the place to do it. Somewhere like Reddit or The Student Room, or even the anonymous feature in Facebook groups is much more successful for this. This isn’t to say that Instagram couldn’t be used in this context, but I don’t see that it could be used as a safe space to be open about experiences and feelings.

What Are Anonymous Posts in Facebook Groups And How To Make Them - Online Group Success

And lastly, an Instagram account of this sort could be very emotionally harmful to the person or persons running the account. An inbox full of potentially shocking or emotional experiences is something that could be triggering to the account owner. I think for this to be something that wasn’t harmful each message would need a trigger or content warning. This would ensure that no one got triggered by submissions to the page and it would mean that everyone’s emotional wellbeing would be prioritised.

However, I learnt a lot from this short lived Instagram account.

I learnt that people need a place to vent, and that seeing other’s experiences makes people feel less alone. I learnt that Instagram accounts of this sort get a lot of inappropriate messages, of people wanting to question the truthfulness of people’s experiences and calling them liars, just because that thing hasn’t happened to them.

I also learnt that the experiences of female working class students, whilst obviously individual to each person, are largely the same. This leads me to believe that a systemic change is needed, so that these experiences aren’t being had by the majority of female students from the working classes.

Small First Intervention

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Given that I changed my question so close to the deadline for our first intervention to be done, I decided to start super small.

As a result of surveys I conducted I found out that a lot of female students from working class backgrounds feel as though they are not part of a community. So I started an Instagram account – I wanted to see if this was a method of building a community that my stakeholders would engage with.

From conducting this intervention and receiving feedback, I realise that this doesn’t answer my research question. I am focusing on how universities themselves can better support students, not how students can support students. I also think Instagram isn’t a viable place to build this kind of community due to the lack of anonymity. If I were to move forward with building a community, it would need to be on a platform that can be more anonymous or a secure safe place. Maybe a private Instagram page or a closed Facebook group?

Either way, I think this was a successful intervention. Not in the way I wanted but I think the feedback I received gave me a kick to hone in on my question more for my next intervention. If one of my later interventions goes down the community building lines, then I think I have learnt how not to do it!