Looking to Italian Instagram Stories for Information and Social Good

When Elisa started her Instagram account 3 years ago, she used the platform to help fellow travelers learn the more intricate details about her home city of Rome, Italy. Elisa’s account, @RomeInside, has over 35,000 followers and she provides tips and insider cultural information about the city of Rome. She covers food, culture, music, city sights, archaeological sites and art exhibits. In the more recent past, she’s used her account to keep her audience informed about the current countrywide quarantine and civilian lockdown during the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. As you likely know by now, Italy has bore the brunt of the more disastrous parts of the outbreak, unfortunately becoming the second worst-hit in terms of casualties.

Since 2014 I’ve been fortunate to spend my summers in Italy, specifically Rome, documenting and mapping socio-political and cultural shifts in the region. As a new media educator, I look to accounts like Elisa’s to inform my work and learn about the region from the local perspective. Learning a city is difficult — the currency, ordering food, the cuisine, and trying to see as much as possible. Pages like Elisa’s bridge those gaps.