The Value-Based Guardian: Digital Public Relations, Pastoral Governance and Compliance Performativity in a Catholic Minority Women's College in Hyderabad

Abstract

The strategic use of social media for public relations (PR) in Indian higher education has been studied largely through the lens of posting frequency and engagement volume, leaving the governance logics that produce institutional communication comparatively unexamined. This paper examines how a private, autonomous, Catholic minority women's college in Hyderabad negotiates its digital public presence from a hybrid position between institutional independence and publicly funded compliance. Drawing on a case study of St. Francis College for Women, the analysis synthesises an ethnographic interview with the Principal and a trace analysis of 644 public posts published on the institution's official Facebook and Instagram handles between April and December 2025, each read with its full ledger of reach, views, reactions, shares and comments. It is found that the institution translates, rather than imposes, its Francisian ethos through a digital pastoral pulpit, contextualised value pedagogy and asynchronous care; that crisis learning from a 2019 dress-code episode replaced institutional silence with proactive, empathetic communication; and that state mandates such as Unnat Bharat Abhiyan are converted from evidence of activity into evidence of impact. Across the corpus, a single structural pattern is observed: the intensity of administrative control over a piece of content is inversely related to its voluntary circulation. The administrator emerges as digital architect, warden, compliance officer and brand manager simultaneously. The findings extend Foucauldian and Goffmanian accounts of institutional order to algorithmically mediated educational settings and carry practical implications for values-led institutions negotiating audit culture and marketisation.