Social Life in Instagram Online Communities

In general, social media platforms are perceived as the most popular representation of the social use of the Internet. Forums, online communities, social networking sites, chatrooms and many others are social spaces where users present themselves, share multimedia content with other users and create social interactions. For many, communicating on social media platforms is a daily habit, a place for work and a source of entertainment to the extent that most of their social life is experienced online. On the Internet, people can find various ways and platforms to socialise and connect with people with same interests.

In this, photography seems to be a widespread hobby. Platforms like Flickr, Pinterest and Instagram are an example of this tendency. Considering Instagram in particular, it can be observed that the platform provides various opportunities (online photo contests and offline InstaMeets and InstaWalks discussed later) to socially interact with other users and create relationships of interests, that is the passion for photography. This might be one of the reason why many users consider Instagram as belonging to the family of social networking sites. Giulio, for example, due to his love for photography, considers Instagram a real social networking platform, rather than a pure photo gallery. He believes that the presence of photographs is precisely the reason that encourages people to engage with each other. This type of social interaction is based on the common interest in photography.

Structurally, Instagram does not offer a list of friends as other social networking sites. Instead, it offers a different type of connection among users, the ‘following’ button. In fact, the type of connection offered is the possibility to follow other people’s Instagram account, which allows users to like and comment on photographs. These types of interactions (following, liking and commenting) are publicly visible to all users by default, but they can be changed making the appropriate modifications to the privacy setting. This can give the opportunity to create private accounts where photos are visible only to the people approved by the account owner. In addition to considering Instagram as a social networking site, it is also a platform of communities of interest, where photography is easily recognised as eliciting social interactions. Broadly, communities of interest are groups of people who share common interests. They exchange ideas and support about the given passion. In fact, they do not only carry out transactions with one another, but their interactions are generally focused on specific topic areas.

A previous study identified that Instagram users can be clustered into two groups: general users and members of the Instagram community (Igers). In addition, the Igers presents an internal subdivision that sees the participants divided in Igers community managers and members. The presence of different users showed different conceptions of the experience of sociality on the platform. On the one hand, users who are not part of the Igers do not seem to use Instagram as a social networking platform. Nevertheless, they believe that Instagram can be used as a good way to smooth the path to create social relationships. On the other hand, for the Igers, Instagram is considered an authentic social networking platform that uses photography as a main topic for social interaction and communication. It is easy to assume that the Igers members and community managers, precisely because of their inner interest in photography and visual communication, see the potential of Instagram as a social network more.

Among those Instagram users who are not part of the Igers community, photography is perceived as a good vehicle for social interaction as it overcomes linguistic barriers between those from different countries. For example, Konnor is very engaged with Instagram. He strongly believes in the sense of belonging and community that people can find on Instagram. To describe this, he mentions that Sammy, one of his friends living in the United States, organised a Christian Conference in 2012 in Canada with the main goal of gathering together believers from all over the world. He decided to use Instagram as a main channel to engage with people. They advertised the conference through Instagram, Facebook and other media channels. The expectation was to build community through the photosharing platform. Konnor highlights that their photosharing was centred on promoting positivity through captions as well as beautiful pictures. The success collected by using the platform pushed Konnor to think that photography on Instagram helps to build connections with people across countries, languages and other potential social barrier.

Internet and New Modes of Social Life