A Networked Self and Platforms, Stories, Connections by Zizi Papacharissi

Author:Zizi Papacharissi [Papacharissi, Zizi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138722682
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

These stories and experiences from queer women about their Instagram use show how sexual identity can play a key role in the production of networked self-representations that adopt platform-specific microcelebrity practices. Aligning with long-standing themes of microcelebrity practice, participants reflected their sexual identity in intimate displays to connect with audiences, tailored their self-representations reflexively according to audience feedback, and managed refraction by targeting specific audiences. They combined these practices with Instafamous techniques, following platform trends of using popular hashtags, shouting out accounts with many followers, producing highly stylized images, and referencing shared LGBTQ and popular culture. These findings build upon Marwick’s (2015) recognition of popular users’ Instafamous practices by identifying similar approaches in the self-representations of everyday users. Further, they highlight how an identity category, particularly sexual identity, can serve as a form of personal expression and a reference that affiliates individuals with recognizable and glamorized lifestyles.

While Instafamous practices stem from Instagram’s platform architecture and user conventions, queer women’s experiences show how the platform both afforded and constrained aspirational labor toward personal and/or economic goals. Instagram’s hashtags and @mentions enabled individuals to declare their affiliation with particular identities and users while also connecting with others over these shared affiliations. Filters and features for adjusting images, along with compatible third party apps, allowed queer women to produce stylized images while the platform’s emphasis on visual imagery made intertextual references to celebrities and popular culture salient for audiences. However, participants also resisted platform features that converged audiences, such as automatic cross-posting to Facebook, in order to produce targeted self-representations. Other users’ practices, employing pseudonymous accounts to harass and send unsolicited sexual messages, also added to queer women’s daily labor of blocking and reporting accounts. Ignoring these comments and working around Instagram’s limited space for textual address, participants shifted dialogue with audiences into private messages or to other platforms. Instagram’s content moderation policies and user flagging system required some participants to self-censor their self-representations or risk losing the audiences they cultivated through Instafamous practices. Although the women in this study used platform-specific means of gaining attention for their business, talent, or reputation, they also developed work-arounds and engaged with multiple platforms when Instagram limited their microcelebrity practices.

When speaking with these women, it was difficult to gauge the actual outcomes of their Instafamous approaches to microcelebrity. Participants who employed a range of microcelebrity practices across platforms tended to have more followers than others but it was not clear if this could be directly linked to financial or personal outcomes. Duffy (2016) notes that the reward system for aspirational labor is highly uneven since laborers’ creative production is often mired in gender expectations and overshadowed by the consumption of branded goods as part of their self-promotion. Participants in my study struggled against gender discourses applied to queer women. This was evident in the lengths they went to not to be rendered invisible, attempting to “look gay” or countering a “straight look” with queer hashtags, fighting assumptions that queer women are actually attracted to men or are always heteroflexible.

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