Field work diary #7 Digital & Algorithms

Bodies and platforms

Fig.1 Home, find, post, and reels button at the bottom of the screen

Instagram holds multiple functions including posts, reels, stories, but what is common to them is that they are a tool to create a particular self-image
(Fig.1 ). For example, if you want to showcase your taste in fashion, you can post a photo of your outfit. Or moreover, it represents your values and interests in a symbolic manner. Posting a photo of you exercising could mean that you want to be viewed as a healthy, well-balanced individual. By an accumulation of these posts, we can express our ideal personalities.

However, you can not completely redraw a new narrative of yourself on this platform. Many of the people we will meet daily in person, or in ‘real’ also know 'digital me' on Instagram, so presenting images that are completely fabricated could harm your image in ‘real’ terms. Instead, people resort to posting a somewhat brushed up version of themselves, a narrative created by the collection of the sides we want to present. A person may post a photo of themselves in an outfit they spent time and care about, but not on a day when they did not bother. Hence, most people would present themselves on Instagram in their ‘best’ version, even if it is not perfectly ideal.

Fig.2 Relation between our 'real' and 'digital' selves on Instagram

Therefore, it is fair to say that our ‘real’ selves set more so of the boundaries of who we can be in the ‘digital’ platform, Instagram. At the same time, our ‘real’ selves do not have total control over the narratives we can make on the ‘digital’ world, the opposite way around could easily happen (Fig.2). Even small acts such as changing our profile picture on Instagram could signal a change in the ‘real’ world, as others will question the intention behind the choice. After all, the ‘digital’ world gives us more options in how we want to present ourselves, and this shared awareness drives what is visible and not visible on the platform.

platforms, powers, place

Fig.3 Relationship between amount of text and interaction with the audience on Instagram
Sprout Social (2019). Know Your Limit: The Ideal Length of Every Social Media Post. [online] Sprout Social. Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-character-counter/.

Instagram’s parent company, Meta, also operates Facebook, a social media similar to Instagram that allows people to post photos and text each other. While the former has been out for longer and currently is the most used social media, Instagram has had a more consistent growth in its number of new users, led by the younger generation. The main difference between them is Instagram’s focus on image over text. While Facebook allows up to 63,206 characters on a single post, Instagram only allows 8,000. Furthermore, Instagram truncates captions that are longer than 125 characters, further disincentivizing people from posting long texts (Fig.3). This gives images and videos the centre stage in the platform as means to build a narrative of yourself.

Although these narratives may appear permanent on the surface, with a long-term observation it is often fluid and unstable. For example, a post, a series of photos that go under your profile will be permanently there, unless you edit them. While people will see a new post the first thing they do when the app is opened, when it is edited or deleted it happens without any notification. This feature gives priority to the new content posted on the platform, allowing people to easily change their past content. Hence creation and destruction of a new narrative could be done with minimal effort, often quicker than we could do in the ‘real’ world. A similar illusion is observed by Johnson (2019)’s study into the construction of new data centres in Iceland, where narratives that appear permanent are fluid and easily changed. Here, a “mutually profitable portrait of the Icelandic Wilderness” is constantly recreated, catering to investors' concerns such as sustainability and natural hazards that shift over time.

Reflection and limits of methods

Fig. 4 How much control do we have over the content we view?

Lastly, looking at the assumptions about our bodies Instagram has, it is not hard to notice that the algorithm equates our viewing time of a certain content with our interest. For example, if we stop to a video that bewilder us even though we have no interest in it, Instagram will only recognise that we did not scroll past it and will assume we would enjoy similar content (Fig.4). This may seem a reasonable design for them, as their goal in essence is to keep people on the platform as long as possible. However, viewing or reaction time does not always equate to interest, and people’s bodies on digital platforms will be eventually replaced with a ‘logical’ body constructed by data collected fed to the algorithm. Noticing such ironic consequences requires comparison of findings from ethnographic research to how people use Instagram, to that of narratives created by data.

Bibliography

Chaffey, Dave. “Global Social Media Research Summary 2024.” Smart Insights, 1 Feb. 2024, www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/.

Johnson, A (2019) Emplacing Data within Imperial Histories: imagining Iceland as data centres' 'natural' home. Culturemachine Vol 18.

Sprout Social. “Know Your Limit: The Ideal Length of Every Social Media Post.” Sprout Social, 30 May 2019, sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-character-counter/.