Image retrieved from: http://rocketpost.com/blog/instagram-direct-how-to-use-four-tips/#.Vc3PzLKqqko
It is a common assumption that social media sites are used simply to contact friends and family, and share with them, moments of your everyday life. Since I became a member of the ever so popular, photo-sharing site Instagram, I have become aware of how the virtual world has evolved into something more than just motivational and inspirational posts, selfies and high definition photographs, and a place for documenting memories.
Tuan (1977, p.6) states in his reading, “what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.” When it was first introduced, Instagram opened opportunities for its users to create posts with both an aesthetic and textual component in order to express themselves, and follow and/or like other users’ posts or profiles to create a variety of content in their Instafeed. Not only that, Instagram and other virtual spaces, have also enabled businesses to promote and sell products, and allowed artists to present their musical compositions or artworks in photos or short video clips. Discourses, which were discussed in this week’s lecture, “enable identity to be constructed and social relationships to be constituted” (Luyn, 2015) which is what has made Instagram such a valuable tool for professionals. McNeill (n.d., p.313) states something similar in her reading: “many internet diarists have used their “amateur” narratives to achieve “professional” writing acclaim.”
While Instagram has its advantages, the nature of this social network is misleading. As mentioned in Rachel Simmons (2014) article, "The Secret Language of Girls on Instagram", Instagrammers, particularly girls, have "re-purposed [Instagram] into a barometer for popularity, friendship status and self-worth". While there are many users who aren't particularly concerned with how many likes or followers they have, the previous statement reveals how the intent of Instagram—staying connected and sharing visual moments of daily life—can be distorted by one's search for approval. I myself, use my account to share my travelling experiences and sometimes have been, in a way, disheartened by the lack of likes or followers I received on what I believed was an appreciable post; several times I have deleted a photo because I thought it just wasn’t good enough. So what is it that compels us to post something significant? Is it our ever-changing culture? What values influence our virtual space?
References
McNeill, L. (n.d.). Diary 2.0? A genre moves from page to screen. In C. Rowe and E. L. Wyss (Eds.), Language and New Media: Linguistic, cultural, and technological evolutions (pp. 313-325). Cresskill: Hampton Press Inc.
Simmons, R. (2014). Time Inc. Network. Retrieved from: http://time.com/3559340/instagram-tween-girls/
Tuan, Y. F. (1977). Space and Place: The perspective of experience. London: Edward Arnold.
Something that really strikes me about Instagram, and that you mentioned in your blog, is that Instagram occupies a vaguely unique space in the social media world – it’s extremely image-biased. Most other social networks are text-biased, or they do not have as much focus as much on the ‘social’ aspect. Instagram is something between a diary and a scrapbook, and I think it is a very natural side-effect of the Internet’s voyeuristic/’pics or it didn’t happen’ nature: the audience wants proof, and the prevalence of image-editing software does not matter. It makes Instagram an amazing historical record, a showcase not only of what happens in our lives, but what we think is worth privileging, worth showing others. Social media is going to be an incredible resource for future anthropologists/historians/etc, since unlike published diaries, which have been filtered through “the traditional mechanisms of the research and publishing world” blogs have not—they have “changed and challenged even these systems” (p. 317).
ReplyDeleteMcNeill, L. (2009). Diary 2.0?: A genre moves from page to screen. In C. Rowe and E. Wyss (Eds.), Language and New Media: Linguistic, Cultural, and Technological Evolutions (pp. 313-325). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press Inc.