Social Media Analysis Paper
Instagram is a social media platform for posting pictures and/or videos with captions to share with one’s followers. The purpose of someone’s personal account is to share pictures and/or videos of his/her life with his/her followers. Normally the person’s followers are a combination of family, friends, mutual friends, and a couple strangers. Even though personal accounts are to show a person’s life that is not always the case. Life consists of up and downs no matter how great a person has it. Some people have up and downs that may be bigger than others which is how life works. For example, my 15-year-old cousin has autism. His life is a lot different from mine. His ups are going swimming, seeing his family, dancing, singing, and napping. His downs are having to take his medicine, having seizures, having to be hospitalized from side effects of the medicine or his seizures, not being able to express himself the way he wants to as a 15-year-old boy. In contrast, my ups and downs of life are a lot simpler and not as intense. My ups are being able to go home and see my family, friends, and boyfriend. They also include getting good grades on my assignments, doing well in softball, exercising and eating a well-balanced diet. My downs are being home sick, being recently diagnosed with a health issue and now working through it and figuring it out, and not getting a proper sleep every now and then. Even though my cousin and I’s ups and downs are a lot different from one another, we still have them because we both are living human beings.
The majority of people’s accounts on Instagram, including my account, depicts the good part of our lives and not our real lives that include the ups and downs. I believe that Instagram consists of two groups: personal Instagram accounts and “finsta” accounts. This group of Instagram, that make up the majority of Instagram, are personal accounts. These only show our ups and good part of life. These good parts include the cliché things such as: sunsets, happy photos with our family and friends, beautiful “untouched” images of ourselves, and positive vibes throughout the profile. My personal account username is oliviagolaywhich is a very basic representation of my identity consists of all of these things and I have around 1,000 followers. I have so many followers because I want them to see how great my life really is, even when it is not. My page has all the good parts of my life even though I have had some struggles as listed above.
The second group of Instagram is finstas. These are defined as “fake instas or Instagrams”. These are accounts made by someone with the purpose of posting raw images/videos of one’s life including the ups and downs. The audience one has for these pages are normally close friends and sometimes family. For instance, I only have around 30 followers. The reasoning behind this is that I post some raw thoughts, feelings and pictures on there. I only post it to my trusted friends/family on Instagram. I do not want a random stranger to view this and not know who I am and judge me off of my account. I think the interesting thing is that I should not care if someone sees my real side versus the fake only positive side I show on my “real” Instagram account.
If you click on my username it will show photos of my Instagram page on my Weebly. You can look through and see that the aesthetic is a lot different from my finsta. On my personal account posts everything is happy and positive. The pictures contain something I think looks good and is a good representation for myself. In my personal account’s bio, it contains my full name and says “positive vibes” with my link to my VSCO (a photo blog) for that nice sophisticated look. Then looking collectively at my photos, you can see that they are all of a common theme: me, softball, my boyfriend, my friends, my family, or an artistic picture of nature. All of the photos contain my ups for my life. In all of these photos or videos, I make sure that the people look good and the overall all photo is pretty. My process for this is taking a hundred of the same photos and analyze each one until I find the best out of them all. Then I open the photo into one of my editing apps to final touches on things such as: blurring the background if it isn’t super pretty, adding detail to the eyes, blurring the zits and wrinkles on my face, whiting the teeth, and adding more color to the background if it is pretty. Then once that process is done I have to think of a clever caption; not too much or too little. I think about how I have to capture my followers’ attention with the photo and the caption. There is a lot of effort that goes into posting a photo to my real Instagram account. These are all the ups of my life on my real Instagram and I do not show the downs. There are no videos of me with a double chin, face mask on, lip singing Michael Bublé, drinking a glass of wine, on a Tuesday night, stressing out about my next day of scholarly activities. On my finsta, you will find that video and so will the 30 followers I have.
The majority of people’s accounts on Instagram, including my account, depicts the good part of our lives and not our real lives that include the ups and downs. I believe that Instagram consists of two groups: personal Instagram accounts and “finsta” accounts. This group of Instagram, that make up the majority of Instagram, are personal accounts. These only show our ups and good part of life. These good parts include the cliché things such as: sunsets, happy photos with our family and friends, beautiful “untouched” images of ourselves, and positive vibes throughout the profile. My personal account username is oliviagolaywhich is a very basic representation of my identity consists of all of these things and I have around 1,000 followers. I have so many followers because I want them to see how great my life really is, even when it is not. My page has all the good parts of my life even though I have had some struggles as listed above.
The second group of Instagram is finstas. These are defined as “fake instas or Instagrams”. These are accounts made by someone with the purpose of posting raw images/videos of one’s life including the ups and downs. The audience one has for these pages are normally close friends and sometimes family. For instance, I only have around 30 followers. The reasoning behind this is that I post some raw thoughts, feelings and pictures on there. I only post it to my trusted friends/family on Instagram. I do not want a random stranger to view this and not know who I am and judge me off of my account. I think the interesting thing is that I should not care if someone sees my real side versus the fake only positive side I show on my “real” Instagram account.
If you click on my username it will show photos of my Instagram page on my Weebly. You can look through and see that the aesthetic is a lot different from my finsta. On my personal account posts everything is happy and positive. The pictures contain something I think looks good and is a good representation for myself. In my personal account’s bio, it contains my full name and says “positive vibes” with my link to my VSCO (a photo blog) for that nice sophisticated look. Then looking collectively at my photos, you can see that they are all of a common theme: me, softball, my boyfriend, my friends, my family, or an artistic picture of nature. All of the photos contain my ups for my life. In all of these photos or videos, I make sure that the people look good and the overall all photo is pretty. My process for this is taking a hundred of the same photos and analyze each one until I find the best out of them all. Then I open the photo into one of my editing apps to final touches on things such as: blurring the background if it isn’t super pretty, adding detail to the eyes, blurring the zits and wrinkles on my face, whiting the teeth, and adding more color to the background if it is pretty. Then once that process is done I have to think of a clever caption; not too much or too little. I think about how I have to capture my followers’ attention with the photo and the caption. There is a lot of effort that goes into posting a photo to my real Instagram account. These are all the ups of my life on my real Instagram and I do not show the downs. There are no videos of me with a double chin, face mask on, lip singing Michael Bublé, drinking a glass of wine, on a Tuesday night, stressing out about my next day of scholarly activities. On my finsta, you will find that video and so will the 30 followers I have.
My personal Instagram account:
Typical Instagram posts for my personal account:
My finsta account:
Typical posts for my finsta account: