Constructing the Visual Online Political Self: An Analysis of Instagram Use by the Scottish Electorate

Stephen Richard — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 19:10:02 +0000

Primary Author or Creator

Jamie Mahoney

Stephen Richard Fri, 09/24/2021 - 20:10

Additional Author(s) / Creators

Tom Feltwell, Obinna Ajuruchi, Shaun Lawson

Date Published

Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:00

Category

Media

Type of Resource

Academic Paper

Length (Pages, words, minutes etc...)

13pp

Fast Facts

Through a qualitative analysis of images shared on the platform Instagram, we demonstrate that the Scottish electorate did indeed used image-sharing for political self-expression -- posting a variety of visual content, representative of a diversity of political opinion. We conclude that users utilised Instagram as a platform to craft and present their "political selves".

More details

This paper presents an investigation of how the Scottish electorate utilised photo-sharing on social media as a means of participation in the democratic process and for political self-expression in the periods immediately prior to two recent major democratic votes: the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, and the 2015 UK general election. We extend previous HCI literature on the growing use of social media in a political context and contribute specifically on understanding the emergent use of visual media by citizens when engaging with political issues and democratic process. Through a qualitative analysis of images shared on the platform Instagram, we demonstrate that the Scottish electorate did indeed used image-sharing for political self-expression -- posting a variety of visual content, representative of a diversity of political opinion. We conclude that users utilised Instagram as a platform to craft and present their "political selves". We raise questions for future research around power and inequality on such platforms as well as their capability of providing a persistent forum for debate.

CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Constructing the Visual Online Political Self: An Analysis of Instagram Use by the Scottish Electorate. Pages 3339–3351

A paywall is in operation

Resource Address (URL)

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2858036.2858160

Keywords

Instagram

2014 independence referendum

Social media

Language English