Instagram as a semiotic ecosystem: exploring everyday browsing using a mediated discourse analytical approach

Abstract

In recent years, Instagram has become one of the most popular platforms for young people to share their eve-ryday moments and interact with others. Spending from a couple of minutes to hours per day on Instagram has become part of their habitus (Bourdieu 1977). This study proposes a new way of conceptualizing Insta-gram in the online-offline nexus, with a particular focus on Instagram browsing that is always situated at a specific moment in time and place in users’ daily life. When such a site of engagement is repeated regularly, a ‘nexus of practice’ is formed (Scollon 2001). This social action that is taken by the social actor on a daily basis, mediated through various kinds of mediational means, can also be taken as a social practice. The data for this study include screen movies, diaries, and interviews. During a one-week period, several young peo-ple based in Hong Kong were asked to record their phone screen whilst browsing Instagram, to keep a brief diary of their Instagram use and its context, and to answer some questions about their interpersonal relation-ships and personal choices and values. With these data, the actions that the user performs before, during and after browsing Instagram at specific time and place during a day are recovered. Analysis is conducted around the three elements of a mediated discourse analytic framework, namely discourse in place, interaction order, and historical body, giving consideration to both online and offline activities involved in their Instagram browsing. In this sense, Instagram can be regarded as a ‘semiotic ecosystem’ (Scollon/Scollon 2004) where multiple cycles of discourse interweave. This study yields preliminary yet promising results by demonstrat-ing how Instagram data and user behavior can be understood from a linguistic, particularly mediated dis-course analytic, perspective.