It also gathers tools and strategies that enable companies to monitor the progress of their promotional campaigns. In doing this, companies involve the work of formal employees, social media experts (e.g. bloggers and influencers) and importantly general users, who are increasingly becoming part of the profit-generating process. In using social media rather than traditional media channels, companies encourage customers and Internet users to be part of the marketing machine in posting content (e.g. comments and reviews), building relationships and engaging with products online.
owadays, the potential of Internet connectivity and visibility is broadly used in marketing to improve brands’ presence on social media on a daily basis. Despite the opportunities that these new techniques offer, the use of data analytics tools and social media marketing strategies raises concerns regarding users’ data privacy and labour exploitation. In this context of opportunities and challenges, this chapter explores the employment of Instagram and the practice of photosharing in social media marketing giving particular attention to the political economy of communication. It identifies new dynamics of consumption and production of online content sharing, and discusses how commercial directions are strongly shaping new visual practices on Instagram.
A key aspect of the new mechanisms of production and consumption emerge from the mobility of smart devices, adding a further level of complexity to the political economy of social media. An important example of this discourse is the newly created partnership between Facebook and Instagram. Because of the interconnections and the cross-photosharing between Facebook and Instagram, Instagram became essentially the mobile extension of Facebook, allowing an ever-present social media experience with photosharing as a key component. Instagram, as a smart application, allows users to share constantly live mobile practices. The partnership with Facebook increased Instagram users from 15 million to 100 million (Olenski, 2012). Indeed, from 1 August 2012 to 1 November 2012 was observed a considerable growth of brand accounts on Instagram (from 26% to 34 %). The partnership allowed users to upload photos on Instagram passing through Facebook, making Instagram images visible also to Facebook friends. Indeed, after the acquisition it was observed that ‘more than 90% of Instagram photos (posted by brands) were also posted on Facebook’. Precisely, the characteristic of mobility afforded by Instagram has been identified as one of the key elements that facilitates the intensification of the daily use of the platform.
Major changes in the political economy of Instagram emerge due to the fact that modifications, improvements and business deals (the Facebook purchase is the example of this) changed Instagram’s initial status of a mere photosharing platform into a business machine that relies on the power of visual communication. A recent study by Horst provides an example. In an ethnography conducted in Jamaica, she highlighted that visual communication plays a significant role in new strategies of mobile branding. In fact, for marketing campaigns, mobile phones and social media are able to establish a level of social intimacy necessary to engage with users/potential consumers. This study confirmed that the use of social media and mobiles visibly extends the spaces for consumption of content and services.
Digital Cellphones and Youth Perception of Communication
