Performing Identity on Social Media: Instagramming Jewishness on US University Campuses

Abstract

This study examines how social media platforms function as arenas for identity construction among minority student groups. Social media fosters a culture of connectivity, openness, and positive affect, projecting images of belonging that often contrast with the challenges faced by marginalized communities in everyday campus life and their yearning for distinction and communal boundaries. Drawing on Butler’s framework, identity online is understood as performative, emerging through repeated acts and recognizable signs, rather than as a reflection of fixed essence. Against this backdrop, the study investigates the Instagram presence of Hillel centers in the United States. A semiotic analysis of over one thousand Instagram images, supported by informal conversations with students, staff, and social media managers, reveals a communicative repertoire we term Celebrating Identity. This repertoire integrates Jewishness, youthfulness, national belonging, and institutional affiliation to produce a diffuse and inclusive Jewish identity. While such representations foster community and affirm multiple affiliations, they also risk masking the vulnerabilities and tensions experienced by Jewish students amid campus unrest and antisemitism. Social media thus emerges as both a resource of empowerment and a fragile form of support for minority identity work in contemporary higher education.