In this study, 189,414 posts on gamification and education published in 2022 function as a large-scale “thermometer” of teachers’ enthusiasm on social media. Barroso Moreno, Mendoza Carretero, Sáenz-Rico de Santiago, and Rayón Rumayor turn digital noise into an object of analysis, asking what behaviors, profiles, and interests lie behind the most visible content on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
The article thus shifts the focus from gamification in the classroom to gamification in circulation—the space where trends, repertoires of materials, and narratives of innovation are constructed.
Methodologically, the study is deliberately data-driven: web scraping for Instagram and TikTok, the Twitter API, and a management and visualization infrastructure supported by Azure, SQL, and Power BI. On this basis, the authors combine a macro perspective (volume of posts, “like” ratios, sentiment analysis) with a strategic micro-reading, manually analyzing the 100 most viral posts on each platform.
The findings outline a differentiated ecology: Twitter concentrates volume and higher polarization; Instagram emerges as the preferred showcase for sharing resources (especially in Primary Education); and TikTok shows lower volume but extreme virality per post. On the social level, teachers play a central role, and gender patterns emerge: men tend to accumulate more followers and posting activity, while women receive greater support measured in “likes”, a relevant asymmetry for understanding visibility and professional recognition in the attention economy.
The most suggestive conclusion goes beyond the idea that “social networks disseminate gamification”: social networks are shaping what counts as gamification and how it is translated into the curriculum. The article shows that material sharing, often in prescriptive and visually appealing formats, prevails over more problematizing posts, and it warns of a double edge: on the one hand, teachers as emerging agents of design and mediation between curriculum and practice; on the other, the pressure of virality and a minor but present commercialization that may push toward aesthetically attractive products lacking solid didactic grounding.
In sum, the “power of data” does more than map trends: it opens a critical agenda about who defines innovation, which pedagogies travel best on social media, and what risks arise when gamification becomes content optimized for the feed.
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How to Cite: Barroso Moreno, C., Mendoza Carretero, M. R., Sáenz-Rico de Santiago , B., & Rayón Rumayor, L. (2024). Gamification-Education: the power of data. Teachers in social networks. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 27(1), 373–396. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.27.1.37648
