Communication or Distinction? Schools’ Digital Strategies and Families’ Choices

School autonomy has been one of the most relevant topics in the political agenda of the New Public Management (Parcerisa, 2016). It has different edges -pedagogical, managerial, social, etc.- and effects on the education systems and on the families’ behaviours and expectations. The process of plataformisation of education (Kerssens & van Dijck, 2021) and the participation of schools in social media are also crossed by the settings of school autonomy in different contexts.

The aim of this communication is to understand the rationalities behind the development of the schools’ digital strategies and activities in social media. It also seeks to understand how families behave in front of different digital strategies when it comes to choose/assess school for their children. We wonder how and why schools choose different digital platforms for their pedagogical, managerial, and communication activities? How do they explain it to families? Why do they engage in social media activities? How do families assess these activities -or their inexistence? Are they relevant for them to choose school?

To address these questions, we conducted 5 case studies in 5 primary schools in Catalonia, Spain. They are diverse in their ownership and their socioeconomic and geographical characteristics. In each of them we interviewed both the principal and the responsible for the digital strategy, and we conducted one focus group with families and another one with teachers. We also distributed and analysed a survey addressed to families of all the country with children at primary school.

The results point to the relevance of the digital dimension for the construction of the schools’ identity, and highlight the use of the digital strategies by schools to satisfy what they consider to be the families will. They highlight the need to further explore the relationship between these processes and the segregation of the school system.