Featured
#Under The Influenced
Chantelle Caissie, Ph.D. Candidate
Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. These platforms continue to evolve and dominate the social media landscape. Born in the early 90s, I consider myself an “elder millennial” and am perhaps a little too invested in what’s #trending on the #foryoupage than I care to admit. I’d like to think I have a little bit of skin in the game when it comes to influencers and social media . . Ok, perhaps not. Although I do not partake, I do consume. Social media fascinates me. In fact, social media moguls and influencers have always piqued my interest. I do not wish to gain membership to the influencer club. In truth, my introverted nature and anxiety could literally never! Instead, you can find this girly with her head buried in a book or behind her laptop in the most isolated corner of the library (Shhh!).
The researcher in me is curious how social media platforms are being used as marketing tools to influence both current and prospective students. While academic institutions have always sought out new ways to market themselves to the hot up-and-coming generation, the use of Instagram reels and TikTok videos to attract and engage has, from what I’ve seen, grown in the last year.
This last fall, my feed was overloaded with “get ready with me’s,” “dorm room tours,” and “#universitylife.” Now, I can admit that I had a hand in building my TikTok #foryoupage brick by brick. The algorithm certainly took a bit of a left turn from my regular consumption of #DogVideos and #EasyDinnerRecipes, but this 30-something-year-old enjoyed the shift and relished in the funny, at times chaotic, nostalgia of the good ol’ university days. However, despite changing my settings to “no longer interested,” I found that university related content and creators continued to pop up on my feed. So I started my research with the American multi-media giant and host of the podcast Call Her Daddy, Alexandra Cooper.
After signing a $60 million exclusivity deal with Spotify, finishing behind The Joe Rogan Experience in 2021 and 2022, Cooper’s podcast was ranked two consecutive years as the second most popular podcast (Spangler, 2021, 2022). In 2024, Cooper shared with Forbes Magazine her most recent multimillion-dollar move, signing a massive $125 million dollar deal with SiriusXM in August (McGrath, 2024). I’m sure you’re probably wondering, “What does this have to do with academia?”
Cooper has not only established herself as one of the most highly sought-after podcasters and content creators in the game, but she has recently doubled down with her partner, Matt Kaplan, launching the Unwell Network. The American Network is home to many popular content creators who now have a rich platform to share their experiences and create their own live shows and podcasts with the world. More recently, Cooper has launched and is now recruiting for Unwell University. This community-based platform is all about keeping it real and bringing your unfiltered, unapologetic, and fully unwell self to the forefront (Unwell University, n.d.). This new angle, it appears, is interested in extracting the student from the “student experience” — peeking instead into the parties, feelings, fears, and hope-filled connections. Some may argue that this approach is commendable, centring and perhaps understanding the human experiencing the world of academe.
Interested in what’s happening in “my own backyard,” I started looking into Canadian university-based networks specifically designed to enhance the student experience. This search landed me at the doorstep of Bounce Life. This platform was designed in 2018 by two engineering students from Queen’s University. The platform was intended to support students in connecting with friends and accessing information regarding on-campus events. More specifically, Bounce Life maximizes student engagement by partnering with Student Unions to support student organizations and campus event attendance. In fact, there are several Bounce accounts on Instagram and TikTok for almost every university in Canada, including BounceLifeLaurier, BounceLifeQueens, and BounceLifeLondon to name a few.
In my search, I found some great content on these accounts, with students promoting information regarding social clubs on campus, extracurricular events, and helpful support relating to student health and wellness. However, I also came across a number of videos of students promoting young girls in bikinis, binge drinking, making jokes about rating professors after failing an exam, bashing other universities, and hitting up the bar the night before a midterm. Now, I want to be explicit in stating that while drinking and university rivalries have always been the norm, one has to wonder, where’s the line? It seems rather ironic that on one end, BounceLife students are promoting health, connections, and on-campus study spots, while also normalizing, if not glamourizing sleep deprivation, alluding to plagiarism, and prioritizing dollar beer night as opposed to their assignment due at midnight. Does the promotion of wellness and social clubs add fuel to the legitimacy of the unwell, or perhaps questionable posts? And, who monitors these accounts, or does it really matter if, at the end of the day, these “likes,” “shares,” and “follows” are driving admission rates?
Universities do not seem to know what sort of content is being promoted on social media, and yet, appear to remain comfortable offloading their marketing to third-party companies and students. Who becomes accountable here? In offloading their marketing, are universities also offloading their responsibility? One has to wonder whether the idiom, “ignorance is bliss,” really rings true in this case. Are we all just complicit and under the influenced?
References
McGrath, M. (December 6, 2024). Inside Alex Coopers $125 million deal to grow her multimedia empire. Plus: The post-election mental health struggle affecting women. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2024/12/06/inside-alex-coopers-125-million-deal-to-grow-her-multimedia-empire-plus-the-post-election-mental-health-struggle-affecting-women/
Spangler, T. (December 1, 2021). Joe Rogan had the No. 1 podcast in 2021 on Spotify (Podcast News Roundup). Variety. https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/joe-rogan-experience-most-popular-podcast-news-roundup-1235123361/
Spangler, T. (November 30, 2022). Joe Rogan had the most popular podcast on Spotify in 2022. Variety. https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/joe-rogan-spotify-top-podcast-2022-1235444743/
Unwell University. (n.d.) Unwell University. Retrieved February 24, 2025, from https://university.iamunwell.com/
