Abstract
In Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures, Internet scholars Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin provide a comprehensive overview of Instagram’s culture and history. Although the platform has existed since 2010, there are surprisingly few scholarly books dedicated to it, so this book is a welcome addition. As leading scholars in the emergent field of visual social media, the authors are well-placed to unpack the complexities of this influential platform.
The authors contend that Instagram is so much more than merely a selfie platform, and the book underscores the centrality of Instagram within contemporary communicative practices. The relevance and urgency of investigating Instagram lie with its visual focus; the authors argue, stating, “Instagram is an icon and avatar for understanding and mapping visual social media cultures . . .” (p. 2). The book is pioneering in its breadth, providing an in-depth account of Instagram’s technical and social development and the new communicative patterns spurred by this evolution.
The book includes seven chapters. Chapter 1 (“Platform”) offers a history of the development of the Instagram app by founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, beginning with its early iteration as a Foursquare competitor in 2010. The chapter examines several milestones of the platform’s evolution, such as its purchase by Facebook in 2012 and the changes to its application program interface (“API”). Through this mapping, the book highlights how the constant flux of the platform is an integral part of Instagram, and crucial for understanding its current and future state.
The key to understanding Instagram is the centrality and specificity of its visual identity in shaping the platform’s culture and functionality, laid out in Chapter 2 (“Aesthetics”). In the chapter, the authors argue that Instagram encourages a specific “visuality,” spawning its own cultural practices, norms and genres. These platform-specific aesthetic tropes are described in terms of their relation to functional developments and affordances of the platform, such as the square aspect ratio previously offered by the app, and its aesthetic filters.
In addition to its unique aesthetic vernaculars, the authors argue that Instagram has developed its own unique “ecology”—through extensions to the app itself such as private messaging and Stories—and standalone apps, such as Boomerang. Chapter 3 (“Ecologies”) details how this ecology possesses its own spatio-temporality, for instance, physical space is located through hashtags rather than geography, and spaces are understood through their “Instagram-worthy” status (p. 86). Time is also reconceptualized in Instagram’s ecology, resulting in a “decay in temporal resolution” (p. 88) where chronology is not preferenced, as posts are instead given vague markers of time, for example, “7w” for 7 weeks ago.
Turning to the broader commercialization of Instagram, Chapter 4 (“Economies”) considers the prevalence of Influencer culture on the platform in recent years. The chapter highlights the way Influencer marketing strategies have spawned vernacular practices on the platform, such as the way in which today’s Instagram Influencers regularly post selfies holding sponsored products or using sponsored services. The authors argue that such practices serve authenticating purposes, imbuing commercial advertising with a sense of the personal and the intimate.
Beyond Influencer culture on Instagram, the platform is also home to many diverse communities. Chapter 5 (“Cultures”) highlights some of these communities on Instagram, from artists, to politicians, to teachers looking to earn extra money. These groups are loosely bound through public hashtags or organized through mutual networks of followers. The chapter describes the blurred boundaries between the on- and offline nature of these communities, highlighting the growing impact of Instagram culture in physical spaces. Notable examples are “Insta-museums” (p. 161) which include dedicated exhibition spaces for taking Instagram photos, and eateries creating food experiences to capitalize on Instagram trends.
Alongside these distinct cultures, Instagram is also home to what the authors refer to as “liminal figures”—young children and recently deceased individuals. Chapter 6 (“Lifespans”) interrogates the tensions that arise through the representation of these figures, raising questions around the extent of their agency on the platform. It does so by presenting several case studies, from the sharing of ultrasound pictures before a child is born, to child Influencer accounts, to the sharing of #funeral selfies.
In the final chapter, the authors bring together the key points from the book to underscore the profound impact Instagram has had—and continues to have—on popular culture and society in general. The chapter’s best contribution lies in the reflections on the cultural resonance of Instagram, from its now-commonplace position in popular culture such as music videos, to the platform’s central role in stimulating Influencer culture as we know it, while charting the trajectory of emerging “virtual Influencers” (p. 200).
Overall, Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures is an accessible, enjoyable, and informative book that significantly advances conceptualizations of the platform, its practices and cultures. The book is broad in its mapping of the platform’s historical and cultural evolution, and thus, is necessarily descriptive given the dearth of previous comprehensive monographs about Instagram. What stands out the most is the authors’ reverence for the uniqueness of Instagram, reflecting on what it entails to study such a space. Through the interplay of illustrative cases and technical developments, the authors underscore the ways in which the platform is groundbreaking in so many ways, and why it has become an integral part of contemporary mobile social culture. It is refreshing to see this thoughtful overview of Instagram and its cultures that goes beyond bounded case studies of currently published research.
Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures elucidates the nuances of the affordances, aesthetics, and cultures that are distinctive to Instagram, and the authors strike a successful balance between meticulous analysis, historical record, and digestible form. It will be a core reference book for students of media and communication, sociology, cultural studies, and more. It is a must-read for researchers, practitioners, and enthusiasts interested in contemporary digital culture and visual social media.
