Toward a non-binary sense of mobility: insights from self-presentation in Instagram photography during COVID-19 pandemic
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper, I investigate how Instagrammers re-construct themselves as agentive and digitally mobile despite their physical immobility during the early COVID-19 pandemic. By examining four types of post that emerged or became popular during this period, I delineate how Instagrammers take subject positions to negotiate their (im)mobile selfhood in the online-offline nexus. I contend that as the Instagrammers negotiate their own invisibility and sociality during the lockdown, their physical bodies are reconfigured digitally as part of their multimodal self-presentation, troubling the traditional (im)mobile divide. While this study illuminates the democratic potential of Instagram, it also contemplates the extent of an individual’s agency on a global scale.
Source: Media Culture & Society
Author: Gloria Yan Dou
Institution: University of Hong Kong
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3156789752