The Future of Education
Digital Travel Narratives and the Reconfiguration of Intercultural Competence in Higher Education
Denisa Celami, University of Vlora (Albania)
Aida Ciro, Independent PhD Researcher, (Albania)
Abstract
Travel narratives in times of contemporary digital culture are no longer confined to printed memoirs or documentary formats. They circulate constantly through social media platforms, blogs, vlogs, and algorithmically curated feeds, blending text, image, and video into immersive representations of place. For many students, these multimodal narratives, although fragmented, constitute their primary encounter with foreign cultures. The result is a subtle, but powerful transformation in the way cultural knowledge is produced, consumed, and internalized. What appears as a window onto global diversity may, in fact, operate as a mediated familiarity shaped by curated aesthetic filtering, selective framing, and platform logics that prioritise visibility over complexity.
This paper considers the pedagogical implications of this shift. How should higher education respond to a context in which perceptions of cultural “others” are increasingly formed through curated, at times misleading, digital travel content? Drawing on Michael Byram’s model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (1997), particularly the capacities of interpreting and relating and the dimension of critical cultural awareness, and engaging with Darla Deardorff’s (2006) processual understanding of intercultural development, the paper argues that digital travel narratives demand a reconceptualization of intercultural pedagogy. Competence in this environment cannot be reduced to linguistic proficiency or exposure to diversity; it requires the ability to interrogate representation, to recognize subjectivity, and to situate oneself reflexively within systems of cultural meaning.
Rather than treating digital narratives as supplementary teaching materials, the paper proposes approaching them as sites of critical analysis through which students can develop interpretive depth, reflexive awareness, and resistance to algorithmically reinforced stereotyping. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates on the future of intercultural education in an era where culture is increasingly encountered through screens and curated “representations” rather than lived experience.
Keywords: Travel narrative, digital, higher education, intercultural competence
REFERENCES
[1] Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Multilingual Matters.
[2] Deardorff, D. K. (2006). Identification and assessment of intercultural competence as a process. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 241–266.]
