2.0 Instagram Storytelling: I Show, Therefore I Am

Abstract

Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has famously observed that man is “essentially a story-telling animal”. There are multiple ways and platforms that people can adopt to tell their stories. However, there is a recent and particular enthusiasm in the use of Instagram, by so-called “influencers” to specifically advertise their lifestyles… and themselves, so to speak. This master’s thesis thus focuses on the use of non-fictional, autobiographical and visual narratives – i.e. first-person depictions of life experiences through Instagram posts – and their relationship to (online) identity. It addresses the questions of how meaning is made on a visual-based social media like Instagram and how identity and “storyshowing” are intrinsically connected. For this purpose, we will examine the narratives of five European Instagram lifestyle influencers, who use English as a lingua franca to communicate with their followers: the Dutch Rianne Meijer, the Italian Chiara Ferragni, the Swedish Janni Olsson Delér, the Austrian Virginia Rox and the French Jeanne Damas. In the first chapter, we will briefly explore the evolution of storytelling over the last decade and the recent phenomenon of Instagram influencers. We will then investigate the special place of identity within Instagram storytelling. Additionally, we will take a closer look at how our ‘influencers of interest’ give meaning to their stories and what is the source of their popularity. Finally, we will review some of Instagram key topics trough a qualitative and visual analysis of the five aforementioned influencers’ posts on the social media platform. As a conclusion, we will note that Instagram influencers give and make sense of their stories and online identity by mimicking or absorbing (whether on a conscious level or not) the narratives of their peers, thus creating a globalized identity that allows them to remain part of the worldwide Instagram community.