True Life: The Reality of Instagram

The platform I want to study
Instagram is a popular social media platform owned by Facebook. As of December 2014, the platform boasts over 300 million users. It is used for sharing photos and videos. Users can take a photo in the app or upload them from their phone's camera roll. Afterwards, users can upload their photos to the app and to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more. Users may also apply digital filters to their photos. Users can post comments and 'like' other images, set up a profile with a display image, and follow other users' accounts.

Why is this topic important?
Instagram has created pockets of culture and communities because it encourages users to share and interact. When users tag a location, other users can see where they have been and view other photos from that same location. Users can tag other users in photos, either directly or in the comments, and this extends the photos reach further. Hashtags are the most popular way of sharing into specific communities - people looking for something in particular can scroll through all the photos that have particular hashtags attached to them. Hashtags are also a way of branding oneself, which leads to the construction of reality. The curatorial process of Instagram has given rise to constructed realities created by users themselves and I will aim to discuss this participatory culture of Instagram with a focus on constructed realities online versus real life offline.

Main question
My main question is how does Instagram change the way people participate on social media? I hypothesize that users are more thoughtful about the images they upload to Instagram, the way their overall aesthetic of their feed, and I will examine the differences of the before and after of photos that had been posted. People hold more agency in the way they are being portrayed than on other networks.

Why this question is important/Broader context
This question is important because it explores how people have changed due to technology. This idea can be extended to a broader context by bringing in the theory of technological determinism, a phrase that describes how technology has influenced human revolution.

Relevant Sources

 * Mumford, L. (1970). The myth of the machine: The pentagon of power. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
 * Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books.
 * Gladwell, M. (2010). Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://nyr .kr/1Csy7XO.
 * Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. The John Hopkins University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893.