Servingness Through Social Media: A Case Study of Two Emerging Selective HSIs’ Twitter Footprint

Latinx students are less likely to be recruited by colleges across various “high-touch” practices like high school visits and mailers. Given such exclusionary patterns, this study explores how colleges strategically serve Latinx students using an increasingly important, “low-touch” recruiting tool: social media. Our multiple case study analyzes Twitter feeds for two selective emerging Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) to determine whether and to what extent their social media footprint reflects servingness (Garcia, et al., 2019). Findings reveal exemplary digital media practices that center servingness by validating Latinx identities, as well as cautionary lessons that perpetuate deficit views of Latinx populations.