How we use social media: Strategies of Instagram use

Abstract

Social media use is a highly relevant everyday practice with important individual and social consequences. In addition to analyses of such outcomes or of the content recipients are exposed to, how we use social media is an important object of study in itself and an important intervening factor in many processes of communication. Drawing on the theoretical framework of strategies of media use, this study investigates social media use as a strategic practice. Based on qualitative interviews with Instagram users, we identify different elements of strategies and reconstruct their practical sense. For example, social media use can be the simplest way to pass time and can be useful or "inspiring" in different ways. Styles of use can be straightforward or meandering, controlled or automatic. We find distanced or emotionally involved, critical or self-critical attitudes, and the world as represented on Instagram can be experienced as fake, aesthetic, or authentic.