#551: Can Critical Pedagogy Survive Algorithmic Constraints?

Educational researchers increasingly explore social media as learning spaces, yet platforms are often shaped by logics of visibility, brevity, and algorithmic amplification rather than sustained dialogue. This paper examines an educational experiment on Instagram that intentionally adopted Freirean design principles (e.g., posing generative questions, organizing content into editorial lines) to cultivate dialogical participation. By qualitatively analyzing 1,056 user comments for epistemic moves (reinterpretation, testimony, comparison) and comparing emergent themes with one year of platform metrics, we identify traces of dialogical engagement emerging alongside platform design changes. This study foregrounds tensions between critical pedagogies and algorithmic social media environments, raising questions about their suitability as learning environments and how learning is designed, enacted, and constrained beyond formal educational settings.