Blog Post #2- Life Instagrammed

In recent years, the digital media industry has been reconfigured from communicative media to a digital representation of the user. Avid users of social media platforms, like Instagram, often contend that their profiles disseminate an accurate and authentic portrayal of themselves. However, over the past several weeks, users considered to be “Instagram famous”, like Essena O’Neil, have come forward dispelling this myth. O’Neil made a public proclamation about the falsities surrounding the profiles of “Instagram celebrities”. According to both O’Neil and, to a lesser degree, Lilli Hymowitz, what appear to be authentic representations of ‘famous’ Instagram users is typically nothing more than filtered photo shoots manufactured for Instagram. These false representations on platforms, like Instagram, that are promoted by the power of people and institutions to shape technology (Baym, 2015, p. 52), greatly contribute to “the anxiety about the interactivity of new digital media”.

In the chapter, “Making New Media Make Sense”, Nancy Baym describes four perspectives that attempt to account for the anxieties felt by digital media users. However, of the four, I believe that the social shaping of technology has the greatest impact on the user anxieties surrounding interactivity. According to Baym (2015) the social shaping of technology refers to the technological affordances of a specific platform, and how those affordances are used to “engineer particular kinds of sociality”, which then translate into establishing user norms on the platform (p. 51). Exemplified in the article, The Prom Queen of Social Media, the few elite users who have achieved the level of “Instagram famous” tactically edit, post and caption their pictures in a concerted effort to gain popularity. In the article, The Prom Queen of Social Media, Hymowitz stated, “I think people think I’m cooler than I am”. This quote effectively summarizes the direction of new digital media applications. Users are able to manipulate their online identities by strategically sharing a limited image of themselves; an image that adheres to the norms established by the technological affordances of the specific platform.