Instagramming in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Educational Context

This study explores the genre of Instagram communication in a cross-cultural educational context: the USA, Germany, and Ukraine. It aims to analyze the multimodal textual structure and identify linguistic and visual patterns in posts from leading universities in the USA. The findings highlight commonalities and divergences in how universities construct their identity, engage with audiences, and manage their image through Instagram. American and German universities demonstrate highly institutionalized, research-driven communication with heavy use of hashtags, emojis, and pronouns (“we”, “you”), promoting inclusivity and academic prestige. Ukrainian posts emphasize national identity, cultural resilience, and community belonging, often with fewer imperative or rhetorical structures. All three demonstrate strategic use of multimodal tools for branding and outreach.Instagram posts by universities serve as curated, multimodal texts that reflect institutional values, sociocultural narratives, and educational strategies. The differences in syntax, color use, pronoun choice, and emoji frequency illustrate cultural distinctions in communication style and institutional priorities. The study confirms Instagram’s role as a platform for institutional self-presentation and global academic engagement.