Mediated Pedagogies: Edufluencers and the Making of Public Geography in India

The COVID-19 pandemic along with the expanding influence of digital platforms, have accelerated the growth and normalization of online teaching and learning globally, with particularly significant implications in India. This rapid transformation has reconfigured pedagogic modes and learning environments, also foregrounding the increasing prominence of educational actors and knowledge sources operating beyond the boundaries of formal academic institutions. In the Indian context, digital education has persisted beyond the pandemic, emerging as a key site for producing and circulating disciplinary knowledges. This existence is embedded within a hybrid ecosystem constituted by both the public and the private; where online platforms, coaching institutions, public universities, edufluencers, examinations, and learner aspirations intersect across online and offline domains providing high-quality, often free, educational content to mass audiences. This shift resonates with learning practices of the Global South that are often categorized as nonformal or informal education. Although concerns regarding digital divides and unequal access remain, online education platforms have expanded the reach and affordability of geography education, opening the discipline to those who seek tangible results—most notably employability, especially in the government sectors. Drawing on digital ethnography and in-depth interviews with edufluencers, higher education educators, and students, the article examines how geography is communicated particularly by edufluencers employing motivational discourse, relatable narratives, and personalized engagement. Edufluencers here emerge as central mediating actors reconfiguring academic learning through emotional investment and future-oriented aspirations. In doing so, they position learning not merely as a cognitive process, but as an aspirational and socially mediated practice, raising critical questions about the nature of disciplinary engagement within digitally mediated forms of public pedagogy.