Sharing #home on Instagram

Abstract

The term ‘home’ can mean many things. Indeed, the contested nature of the term has caused some scholars simply to dismiss it as useless. However, homes have an undeniable importance to our sense of self. They link us to current or past geographic locations that indicate national or cultural identities, allow us to display our taste and interests through consumer activity, and are places where we engage in leisure activities. Increasingly, we share the images we take in and of our homes widely with others, transcending the boundaries of the family photograph album. Through this study of images shared publicly on Instagram, we investigate the ways that people ‘visibilise’ their sense of home in order to share it with others. We can see through this data the interplays between public and private, domestic and commercial, that digital photography and applications like Instagram have brought to light.

Using social media images as data in social science research

“…Anonymizing or deleting personal identifiers are the most common approaches reported (e.g. Barhour and Heise, 2019; Sandel et al, 2019). However, merely implementing this strategy may not completely remove all threats to privacy.…”

“…As a solution, some researchers decide not to show any textual content from the dataset and/or paraphrase texts used as quotes in the paper, which may better anonymize users (e.g. Barhour and Heise, 2019; Mayoh, 2019). In addition, concealing the data retrieval location reduces the risk of identifying the source and posters, such as data that are collected from a specific discussion group or page (e.g.…”

Iconographies of the everyday: Mediated whiteness and food hospitality activism

“…Clearly a 'designed image', the effect of the black and white photography on the webpage and in the wider media is quite striking (Barbour and Heise, 2019). It is not a common visual aesthetic in reporting the 'everyday'.…”

“…In these ways, the image and other WDP Facebook images like it challenge the white aesthetics of digital food and 'purity politics' within gastronomic discourse and dominant understandings of white people as exemplary hosts. Although such candid, snapshot-style images of homes dominate media platforms like Instagram, this visualisation disrupts notions of belonging through its depiction of non-white suburban migrant hospitality in the suburbs, so missing from Australian national storytelling (Barbour and Heise, 2019). In Australian media, 'ethnic "Others" generally do not participate in the everyday settings, activities or social relations associated with representations of Australianness' (Hogan, 2005: 202).…”