UC Irvine

This dissertation examines how first-generation Latina doctoral students use Instagram to navigate doctoral education and build supportive communities in response to persistent institutional barriers. Previous research has documented the challenges Latinas face in doctoral programs, including financial barriers, limited access to mentoring, unclear program expectations, and a lack of cultural representation. While institutional agents can provide important sources of guidance, their support is not always sufficient to help students navigate the hidden curriculum of doctoral education. Consequently, many Latinas turn to digital spaces to access information, develop relationships, and exchange resources that support their educational persistence. This dissertation investigates Instagram as a virtual counterspace through three related questions: (1) How do first-generation Latina doctoral students use Instagram to navigate the hidden curriculum of doctoral education? (2) How does Instagram function as a site for cultivating Community Cultural Wealth among Latina doctoral students? and (3) How do Latina academic content creators create and sustain virtual counterspaces that support other Latinas pursuing doctoral degrees?The analysis draws on qualitative data collected across three related studies. The first study includes 567 interviews with followers of the academic Instagram page Academic Latina and a content analysis of 30 Instagram posts. The second study draws on 36 interviews with Latina doctoral students who used Instagram throughout their doctoral journeys. The third study consists of interviews with 15 Latina academic content creators who were either currently enrolled in doctoral programs or had recently earned their doctorates. Guided by the frameworks of Community Cultural Wealth and virtual counterspaces, this dissertation employs thematic analysis to examine how Latina doctoral students create, access, and exchange knowledge and support through academic Instagram communities.This dissertation reveals several key findings across three stand-alone substantive chapters. In the first study, Chapter 2, I find that academic Instagram pages function as informal infrastructures through which Latina doctoral students expose and navigate the hidden curriculum of doctoral education. Participants used these spaces to share experiential knowledge about funding, doctoral milestones, and program expectations while normalizing the uncertainty associated with graduate education, making critical information more accessible to current and aspiring doctoral students. In the second study, Chapter 3, I demonstrate that Instagram serves as a digital site for cultivating Community Cultural Wealth by enabling Latina doctoral students to exchange aspirational, navigational, resistance, and linguistic forms of capital that support their persistence in doctoral education. I argue that digital platforms expand existing understandings of Community Cultural Wealth by demonstrating how culturally grounded forms of capital are collectively cultivated and mobilized across institutional and geographic boundaries. Finally, in the third study, Chapter 4, I examine how Latina academic content creators intentionally construct virtual counterspaces grounded in an equity ethic shaped by their own experiences navigating racialized, gendered, and first-generation barriers in higher education. I show that these content creators transform their lived experiences into publicly accessible resources that foster mentorship, cultural affirmation, and community. Together, these findings demonstrate that when used this way, Instagram functions as more than a social media platform; it serves as a virtual counterspace where Latina doctoral students collectively generate, share, and mobilize knowledge and support that compensate for institutional gaps in doctoral education. By examining how digital communities facilitate the circulation of academic knowledge, resources, and social support, this dissertation contributes to scholarship on doctoral education, Community Cultural Wealth, and virtual counterspaces while highlighting the growing role of informal digital infrastructures in promoting educational persistence among historically marginalized students.