{"id":22888,"date":"2017-09-18T14:21:56","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T18:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=22888"},"modified":"2017-09-18T14:34:55","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T18:34:55","slug":"instagram-finstagram-and-calibrated-amateurism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2017\/09\/18\/instagram-finstagram-and-calibrated-amateurism\/","title":{"rendered":"Instagram, Finstagram, and Calibrated Amateurism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Instagram interface is changing so quickly and subtly all at once. For one, the app store on my iPhone constantly invites me to manually update my Instagram app in order to make those unsightly red notification bubbles go away. But the design tweaks and new features that are introduced each time come in small, user-friendly batches that I also learn to keep up and adapt. <\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, although I was among the <\/span>earliest adopters of Instagram in Singapore<\/span><\/a>, where I have been conducting research on Influencers and internet celebrities since 2010, I don\u2019t even recall what the original Instagram interface looked like. Do you? But perhaps the most logical explanation for the seamless uptake of each Instagram update is that the platform is merely institutionalizing into officialdom practices that have been creatively innovated and adapted by its users. The latest of these is Instagram’s multiple account prompt.<\/span><\/p>\n

As someone who <\/span>studies social media for a living<\/span><\/a>, I have multiple accounts for different purposes on most dominant social media (if you\u2019re really curious, that means 5 Instagram accounts including my pet project <\/span>@thetravelingpingu<\/span><\/a>). I used to manually log in and out of each account with its own specific email address and password, until February 2016 when Instagram enabled users to <\/span>link two or more accounts<\/span><\/a> under a single drop down menu. <\/span><\/p>\n

I also used to painstakingly @reply brief thanks to each comment on every photo, but in December 2016 Instagram modeled after Twitter and Facebook and enabled a <\/span>\u2018heart icon\u2019 as a new way of acknowledging comments<\/span><\/a> on posts. The December 2016 also introduced a new feature allowing users to remove unwanted followers and delete comments, giving the impression of greater user autonomy and privacy. <\/span><\/p>\n

In April 2017, the app introduced a new direct messaging update that now allows users to send \u201c<\/span>disappearing photos & videos along with texts & reshares<\/span><\/a>\u201d coherently in the Direct Message function. This encouraged dyadic and group messaging chats that further honed the illusion of seemingly private spaces in the otherwise public-facing, attention-grabbing, heart-hungry terrain of Instagram. <\/span><\/p>\n

June 2017\u2019s update gave users the opportunity to hide photos through the \u201c<\/span>archive feature<\/span><\/a>\u201d, reiterating the notion that privacy can be selectively assigned to content and exercised by users at their agency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last month, when I logged into my Instagram account, I noticed an intriguing in-app prompt. On my home page where I would usually scroll through my own pictures, a drop down banner read:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShare a Different Side of Yourself
\n<\/strong>Create a private account to share photos and videos with a close group of followers\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

As it turned out, Instagram\u2019s latest project was to drive up their consumer base by <\/span>encouraging users to create multiple accounts<\/span><\/a>. And there are three main takeaways from this.<\/span><\/p>\n

1) Instagram\u2019s multiple account prompt borrows from the discourse of Finstagrams<\/b><\/p>\n

By now encouraging multiple accounts through their new affordances and direction prompts, Instagram is bringing into officialdom the practice of Finstagramming. Finstagrams (Fake Instagrams, as opposed to Rinstagrams or Real instagrams) have long been proliferate among young users. <\/span>Of the dozens of popular media articles reporting on Finstas, there are three emergent themes: <\/span><\/p>\n

Firstly, Finstas allow young users to construct continuums of privacy by segregating their audiences. For instance, Finstas are where young people \u201c<\/span>hide their real lives from the prying eyes of parents and teachers<\/span><\/a>\u201d, or curate an \u201c<\/span>employable social media front<\/span><\/a>\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly, Finstas allow users the freedom to curate several digital personae without the need for brand coherence. Young people may use Finstas to post \u201c<\/span>random streams of screenshots, memes and ugly selfies<\/span><\/a>\u201d, and dump content that is not congruent with their primary account so as to \u201c<\/span>protect [their] personal Instabrand<\/span><\/a>\u201d. In other words, this is \u201c<\/span>splintering as self-preservation<\/span><\/a>\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thirdly, Finstas are a backlash against the picture-perfect pristine ecology of Instagram normativity, undoubtedly popularized by social media Influencers. Such separate, distinct, and unlinked accounts thus allows them to escape \u201c<\/span>the pressure to create a beautifully curated Instagram account<\/span><\/a>\u201d, rebel against the \u201c<\/span>overly stylized content shared by celebs and so-called influencers<\/span><\/a>\u201d, and expose the <\/span>\u201cartifice of normal social media<\/span><\/a>\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Multiple Instagram accounts are thus an overt signifier to young users that what once began as a subculture of subversive use has now moved into the mainstream, co-opted, promoted, and monetized by the platform itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

2) Instagram\u2019s multiple account prompt contradicts its parent company Facebook\u2019s single account policy and real name policy<\/b><\/p>\n

Facebook asserts that it is \u201c<\/span>against the Facebook Community Standards to maintain more than one personal account<\/span><\/a>\u201d since the social network is \u201c<\/span>a community where people use their authentic identities<\/span><\/a>\u201d. Shared or joint accounts are not allowed so users will \u201c<\/span>always know who [they are] connecting with<\/span><\/a>\u201d. Facebook also has a \u201creal name policy\u201d, which initially fixated on the notion that all users had a singular official\/legal identity and are to use their \u201c<\/span>birth names<\/span><\/a>\u201d to register on the social network. <\/span><\/p>\n

But amidst the <\/span>difficulty of verifying third party photo IDs<\/span><\/a>, and the <\/span>backlash from queer communities<\/span><\/a> and other marginalized groups for whom <\/span>digital pseudonymity is paramount for personal safety and self-actualization<\/span><\/a>, the company responded to criticism and relaxed its policy to allow users to use \u201c<\/span>the name they go by in everyday life<\/span><\/a>\u201d to \u201c<\/span>keep our community safe<\/span><\/a>\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Where parent company Facebook is adamant and imposing about the singularity and coherence of its consumers’ the digital personae, it encourages its app Instagram to diverge and splinter at the opposite end of the singular-identity spectrum by encouraging users to play with self-presentation and selective audiencing.<\/strong> But why is this so? The singularity of Facebook profiles serves as self-documentation for the company\u2019s database of users. A \u201creal identity\u201d, \u201creal name\u201d, \u201creal life\u201d policy ensures that Facebook is able to facilitate messages and ads from its clients efficiently and effectively to its targeted audience as appropriate. <\/span><\/p>\n

On Instagram, however, the primary motivation for the network appears to be less the archival of membership and more the generation of digital content, no doubt stimulated by the free labour of its users. While Instagram does not legally own any content posted, its terms of use grants them the \u201c<\/span>non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service<\/span><\/a>\u201d. Multiple Instagram accounts per user thus generate more free digital content for the network\u2019s commercial use.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

3) Instagram\u2019s multiple account prompt verifies the rise of calibrated amateurism <\/b><\/p>\n

In its drop down bar prompt, Instagram\u2019s strategically worded key phrases \u201cdifferent side\u201d, \u201cprivate account\u201d and \u201cclose group\u201d suggest that users have long been practising strategies of self-presentation on digital media, in spite of its \u201cauthenticity rhetoric\u201d on parent company and platform Facebook. It supports the need for scholarship on digital identity to go beyond simplistic dichotomies that the \u201conline\u201d is \u201cfake\u201d and the \u201coffline\u201d more \u201cauthentic\u201d, given that all self-presentation in digital and physical spaces is curated. <\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, in the age of picture-perfect, luxury-oriented, hyper-feminine Instagram Influencers who have dominated the Instagram economy thus far, authenticity has become less of a static quality and more of a performative ecology and parasocial strategy with its own bona fide genre and self-presentation elements. I have studied the rise of such performative authenticity as \u201ccalibrated amateurism\u201d, which I define as a \u201c<\/strong><\/span>practice and aesthetic in which actors in an attention economy labour specifically over crafting contrived authenticity that portrays the raw aesthetic of an amateur, whether or not they really are amateurs by status or practice, by relying on the performance ecology of appropriate platforms, affordances, tools, cultural vernacular, and social capital<\/a>\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Calibrated amateurism is a modern adaptation of Erving Goffman\u2019s (1956) <\/span>theory of scheduling<\/span><\/a> and Dean MacCannell\u2019s (1973)\u00a0<\/span>theory of staged authenticity<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Goffman argues that on stage as in everyday life, performers may engage in \u201cscheduling\u201d to segregate different audiences from each other. This is so that only one aspect of a persona is presented as required. Performers may also obscure the \u201croutine character\u201d of their act and stress its spontaneity so as to foster the impression that this act is unique and specially tailored to whoever is watching. In this space, there may be some \u201cinformalit[ies]\u201d and \u201climitations\u201d in \u201cdecorum,\u201d which Goffman defines as \u201cthe way in which the performer comports himself while in visual or aural range of the audience but not necessarily engaged in talk with them\u201d. However, this \u201cbackstage\u201d is seldom as spontaneous as it postures to be but is instead a deliberate effort to manufacture a \u201cback region.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

MacCannell studied tourist settings in similar back regions and describes tourists\u2019 pursuit of authenticity as complicit in the actual manufacturing of a backstage that does not exist. He writes that \u201c[j]ust having a back region generates the belief that there is something more than meets the eye; even where no secrets are actually kept, back regions are still the places where it is popularly believed the secrets are… An unexplored aspect of back regions is how their mere existence, and the possibility of their violation, functions to sustain the commonsense polarity of social life into what is taken to be intimate and \u2018real\u2019 and what is thought to be \u2018show\u2019\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Combining these two classical theories for a contemporary digital phenomenon, internet users today also partake in deliberately curated and intentionally public forms of backchanneling through Finstas and multiple Instas. Multiple accounts encourage followers and viewers to engage in cross-platform hopping, watching, and matching. They imply that we all have backstages and hidden secrets on display on parallel platforms, if only our audience knows where to look and how to look for these easter eggs.<\/strong> Thus emerges a new game in the attention economy where the pursuit is no longer some semblance of authentic disclosure, but a competitive investigation into and comparison of the different strands of selfhood that a single user may put out on multiple platforms through multiple through multiple usernames promoting multiple personae. <\/span><\/p>\n

In short, Instagram\u2019s multiple account prompt is essentially the antithesis of Facebook, where digital identities are fragmented rather than singular, diffuse rather than collective, and playful rather than static. So how many Instagram accounts do you have?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr Crystal Abidin\u2019s new research on \u201ccalibrated amateurism\u201d is open access on <\/span>Social Media + Society, <\/span>which you can download in full <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr Crystal Abidin is an anthropologist and ethnographer who studies young people\u2019s relationships with internet celebrity, self-curation, and vulnerability. Reach her at wishcrys.com<\/a> and @wishcrys<\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Instagram interface is changing so quickly and subtly all at once. For one, the app store on my iPhone constantly invites me to manually update my Instagram app in order to make those unsightly red notification bubbles go away. But the design tweaks and new features that are introduced each time come in small, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2067,"featured_media":22889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[97212,97211,10671],"class_list":["post-22888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-calibrated-amateurism","tag-finstagram","tag-instagram"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2017\/09\/IMG_5452.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2067"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22888"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22896,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22888\/revisions\/22896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}