Theorizing Instagram: Ontology, Epistemology, and Aesthetics

Abstract

There exists a copious literature on social media, including visual-driven ones like Instagram. Researchers, however, only use Instagram as a database to retrieve visual or cultural data to study their subjects of interest. In this paper, I theorize Instagram via the lens of film and media theory and examine if Instagram constitutes a radical break from prior media. I remediate the “ontology-epistemology-aesthetic” structure to investigate Instagram. Starting with the ontological section, I add the discussion of medium specificity into the study of Instagram as an in-trend media built upon the strategies of both past and present media forms, including World Wide Web, photography, collage, Snapchat and more. Moreover, the epistemological section bridges a dialogue among the cognition, haptic, and optic of users’ experience of interaction, embodiment, participatory culture with Instagram. This paper is then followed by the aesthetic section in which I examine Instagram’s styles and conventions regarding each and every individual photo as well as a collection of photos, borrowing core elements of analysis of film art including the framing, color, mise-en-scene, etc. At the end, I wrap the framework up by asserting this paper's stand as a reading of Instagram from the perspective of film and media theory. In a sense, I am reclaiming media theorists' rights to study Instagram and other visual-driven social media.