is-reader

[is-reader]

Introduction

In this guide I will explore queer practices on Instagram as a transgressive reaction to Instagram’s dominant, mainstream discourses. The term ‘queerness’ will refer to sexuality and gender diverse practices, and more broadly will encompass queerness as a ‘collective contestation’ and a ‘deviance from the social script’ (Stanley 2020, p. 243). I will firstly explore how heterogeneous discourses on Instagram are afforded by the app’s socio-technical design and question how certain discourses and performances are better afforded on the platform than others. I will investigate the influence of censorship and social capital on the platform, as well as how groups of marginalised individuals can form heterogenous worlds, establish a sense of community, and ‘push back’ against the app’s normative affordances. Ultimately, this guide is a directive on how queerness can create a space for counter discourse on Instagram. 

Note: click on time stamp below each ‘post’ to open the paragraph in a new tab.

[is-reader]

In their community guidelines, Instagram is described as ‘a reflection of our diverse community of cultures, ages, and beliefs’, an app that aims to ‘foster meaningful and genuine interactions.’  (Instagram 2020). In the app store, it prompts users to ‘explore our community where you can feel free to be yourself and share everything from your daily moments to life's highlights.’ (App Store 2020). The app conveys a community purpose with an emphasis on sharing and diversity, however usage is prescribed by algorithms and must obey by the community guidelines. Instagram is a ‘keeper of public discourse’ (Crawford & Gillespie 2016, p. 413) and therefore the way that the app monitors and censors certain performances shapes the relationship between the mainstream and the marginalised. The app can punish activity or counter discourses that disobey the guidelines can result in ‘shadow banned’ users (user accounts are unable to be found from searching), remove content or accounts entirely. The process of ordering shapes worldmaking (Goodman 1978, p. 9) and Instagram’s ordering of heterogeneous networks can significantly shape representation for marginalised individuals. For example, the reporting function shapes how Instagram’s content is ordered and organised, however it also highlights the app's moderators’ subjectivity and authority over shared cultural discourse. Sex workers who use Instagram as a tool to educate, raise awareness, and promote their digital content must often use ambiguous language related to sex to avoid being banned by content moderators. Although these accounts obey the community guideline that bans posting nudity, the app disproportionately punishes content relating to sex and therefore prevents sexual discourses being accessed on the platform (Gil 2019).  

[is-reader]

Functions such as the verified badge and the algorithmic ordering of content are some of Instagram’s features that consciously promote certain profiles of normative performances on Instagram. This can be seen in the success of models’ and influencers’ accounts on Instagram. An example is Bella Hadid’s (2020) profile, which is mostly comprised of glamorous selfies and images from campaign photoshoots and fashion runways. Her profile has a wide reach, with 31 million followers and each post garnering hundreds of thousands of likes and comments. Her ‘grid’ has a strict visual pattern and a discipled sensibility which epitomises her normative Instagram performance. The images do not convey an array of variation, with seemingly ‘candid’ bikini shoots posted in between serious runway close ups and group photos of her clique of models that evoke a sense of ‘cool’ and exclusion (Hadid 2019). Influencers' personalities and politics are rarely salient on profiles like Hadid’s, thus ‘prohibiting identity discourses from becoming prominent’ (Duguay 2016, p. 10). Complacency and normative Instagram performances perpetuate dominant ideologies and leave little room for counter discourses. 

[ID: Screen recording of woman moving her face and head around to test a proposed Instagram face filter featuring Bella Hadid’s face superimposed onto the woman’s.]

[is-reader]

Additionally, Instagram rewards self-promotion and assimilative performances and has become its own marketplace for profiles to engage in commercial advertising and branding practices. Many Instagram influencer performances constitute the user’s profession, blurring the line between personal sharing and commodification of the self. The purpose of self-branding is ‘focused [sic] on attracting attention and acquiring cultural and monetary value’ (Hearn 2008, p. 213). These behaviours highlight how influencers and ‘microcelebrities’ have hybridised expression and curation, resulting in methods of self-presentation that combine the personal with the inauthentic. A meta example of this is AI-generated influencer, @lilmiquela (2020) a digital robot whose Instagram account mimics mainstream celebrity Insta-aesthetics, sporting high fashion labels in her blank-faced selfies. This is similarly seen in Amalia Ulman’s 2014 Instagram hoax (Ruigrok 2018), which the artist used to underline the materialistic, vapid behaviours of Instagram influencers. Instagram’s rhetoric encourages normative beauty standards within these curated, disciplined user performances. The performances participate in the generation of social capital, which helps Instagram to gather user data and turn a profit from advertisers. These performances align with mainstream discourses and are assimilative presentations of the self that obscure representation of marginalised worlds. Instagram’s ‘commodified nature’ and its ‘dominant heteronormative character’ (Papacharissi 2018, p. 7) limits the opportunity for individuals in the margins to feel represented and for counter discourses to be normalised. 

[ID: Screenshot of Instagram post featured a digitally rendered ‘selfie’ of a young woman with brown hair wearing a pink printed top designed by Marine Serre]

Image reference: lilmiquela 2020, ‘So I’ve been using my [...]’ Instagram, viewed 8 June 2020.

[is-reader]

Although much of Instagram is associated with mainstream discourse, there are worlds outside of what is trending, namely a heterotopia, that establishes a sense of unity and similitude amongst ‘othered’ individuals. Heterotopia on Instagram is an ambiguous space that empowers individuals to realise and form identities that resist mainstream ideologies. Hetherington (1997, p. 43) describes ‘alternate ordering’ as a ‘magical, uncertain space’ that can ‘unsettle the flow of discourse’. Furthermore, ‘heterotopic places are sites which rupture the order of things’ (p. 46) and can produce ‘new modes of social interaction and discourse, or more broadly, a new sociality,’ (p. 53). Queer users of Instagram constitute such a heterotopic network that employ the app’s technology to facilitate growth, education, community and identity formation despite the platform being an exclusionary, mainstream form of social media. For queer people, online representation actively contests mainstream, normative performances and social imaginaries (Stanley 2020, p. 242). Engaging with queer content and communities on Instagram can help individuals expose themselves to new perspectives, experiences and ultimately result in a renewed sense of self. Duguay (2016 p. 3) suggests that heteronormativity, which has a ‘sense of rightness and normalcy’, can be contested when LGBTQ+ people ‘rally for visibility of queer, gender non-conforming in order to establish a sense of community, acceptance and representation.’ For my first user interviewee, Dee* (2020, pers. comm., 19 May) Instagram enriches their queer identity and affirms their non-binary gender presentations. They use the app to gather fashion and makeup inspiration, stay updated on local drag events, connect with other drag queens and build friendships with like-minded individuals. This user is highly attentive to their Instagram activity and performs from a white, able-bodied, conventionally attractive, privileged position. They describe a very rigorous and methodical approach to their Instagram use, such as keeping track of the number of likes each post receives, posting during certain times of the day to optimise content exposure, responding to each comment, maintaining a highly aestheticized arrangement of photos on their profile and spending 4-5 hours editing each post. The use of Instagram has connected Dee to a community of marginalised queer individuals and their self-expression has transformed into an agentic performance of identity. However, this user’s attitude towards Instagram is still focused on generating the most ‘like-worthy’ content and is informed by Instagram’s mainstream influencer practices. Tension remains between the unified power of the drag community and the extent to which the community is prescribed by the algorithm, as well as how one’s creative expression can be inhibited by highly curated, inauthentic self-performances.  

*Interviewee’s name has been changed.

[ID: Video of a person with a warped, distorted face superimposed onto theirs created using face filter programmes.] 

[is-reader]

Users that disengage from influencer behaviours and engage in representing diversity and intersectionality on Instagram demonstrate the power of resisting normative discourses and the support that can arise in ‘othered’ communities. The Instagram account, @fatgirlshiking (2020), is a user-moderated page that features images submitted by diverse, fat-bodied people on hiking trails. Mainstream depictions of hikers often exclude people of colour, non-binary and trans individuals, fat bodies and disabled people. The hikers’ activism destabilises mainstream representations of hikers and furthermore ‘engages fat hikers in strategic, intersectional and... agentic identity work’ (Stanley 2020, p. 246). These images of unconventional bodies epitomise the power of selfie-taking and sharing to challenge misconceptions in mainstream discourses and instigate realisation of one’s identity. Stanley (2020, p. 243) states that ‘queer mobilities... reject the necessity of a community’s physical proximity’. In this instance, Instagram provides a platform for users to engage in intersectional discourses and disrupt normative perceptions of othered bodies. 

[ID: Person with black pants, hoodie and hat hugs a tree & smiles. The tree is a huge Sitka spruce with long tendril looking legs that are twice as tall as the person. There green moss and lichen on the tree. The background is green with trees.]

Image reference: fatgirlshiking 2020, ‘Nature is a powerful tool [...]’, Instagram, viewed 7 June 2020.

[is-reader]

Conclusion + Methodologies

This guide has referenced a variety of users and drawn upon case study examples of normative Instagram behaviours to contrast with queer user perspectives on the app. The guide explores queerness and marginality within a mainstream media framework and investigates the socio-technical affordances of Instagram which promote and censor certain discourses. The two user interviews that were conducted both highlighted the performativity and censorship involved with navigating Instagram as a queer individual. Both the interviewees and the interviewer recognise that their experiences of queerness are related to their privileged positions as able-bodied, white, thin-bodied individuals and do not represent all queer experiences on Instagram. This guide considers how covert forms of conflict, exclusion and misrepresentation may shape queer experiences on social media and contrasts this with agentic identity performances and the powerful sense of community that arises from ‘otherness’. 

[is-reader]

Reference list

App Store 2020, Instagram on the App Store, Apple, viewed June 4 2020, <https://apps.apple.com/au/app/instagram/id389801252>.

Crawford, K & Gillespie, T. 2016, ‘What is a flag for? Social media reporting tools and the vocabulary of complaint’, New Media & Society, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 410-428.

Duguay, S. 2016, ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Visibility Through Selfies: Comparing Platform Mediators Across Ruby Rose’s Instagram and Vine Presence’, Social Media + Society, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 1-12.  

Fatgirlshiking 2020, Instagram profile, viewed 2 June 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/fatgirlshiking/?hl=en>.

Gil, N. 2019, How Instagram's Rules About Sex Are Penalising Women Online, Refinery29, viewed 5 June 2020, <https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2019/04/230263/instagram-sexual-content>.

Goodman, N. 1978, Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett Publishing Co. Indianapolis. 

Hadid, B. 2019, ‘wish you were here [...]’, Instagram, 29 July, viewed 8 June 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/p/B0efYLRA6OC/>.

Hadid, B. 2020, Instagram profile, viewed 8 June 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/bellahadid/>.

Hearn, A. 2008, ‘Meat, Mask, Burden: Probing the contours of the branded ‘self’,’ Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 197-217.

Hetherington, K. 1997, The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering, Taylor & Francis Group, London.

Instagram 2020, Community Guidelines, viewed 4 June 2020, <https://help.instagram.com/477434105621119>.

Lilmiquela 2020, Instagram profile, viewed 8 June 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/?hl=en>.

Papacharissi, Z. 2018, A Networked Self and Platforms, Stories and Connections, Routledge.

Ruigrok, S. 2018, ‘How this 2014 Instagram hoax predicted the way we now use social media’, Dazed and Confused Magazine, viewed 4 June 2020, <https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39375/1/amalia-ulman-2014-instagram-hoax-predicted-the-way-we-use-social-media>.

Stanley, P. 2020, ‘Unlikely hikers? Activism, Instagram, and the queer mobilities of fat hikers, women hiking alone, and hikers of colour’, Mobilities, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 241-256.