‘Ordinary’ Insta-Branding: Behind-the-Scenes Labour of ‘Ordinary’ Producers on Instagram

Abstract

This thesis investigates the behind-the-scenes labour of ‘ordinary’ Instagram (IG) users. It uncovers the rationales driving this mostly concealed self-branding work. These rationales focus on the negotiation of desires to influence the way peers see them, expectations to uphold the ‘rules’ of the IG game, and expressions of one’s ‘authentic’ self. The method adopted is an ethnographic interview approach. Data was collected via interviews and discussions with nine young women from Sydney, Australia, between 2017 – 2019. Our conversations delved into the intimate details of the processes underpinning their self-branding decisions. Our self-reflexive exchanges covered their methods and motives for taking, editing, and uploading images, or deleting or archiving photos. This approach allows for a mapping of the intangible and unspoken ‘rules’ of IG labour for ‘ordinary’ producers. The thesis weaves together these stories to argue that although ‘ordinary’ users’ invisible self-branding efforts, specifically their aesthetic and authenticity labour, often mirror those of IG Influencers and celebrities, the motivations for those choices differ. Problematizing some of the dominant critical discourses on online self-branding, it argues that these hidden labours are undertaken for affective purposes, seeking not financial return or fame but emotional currency – the emotional benefits gained from believing you have shaped the way peers see you and feel about you. To this end, the labour of ‘ordinary’ young female IG users, and its concealment, promises a desirable return but is also navigated through both desires for ‘authenticity’ and feelings of shame that align with postfeminist expectations of girlhood. Considering ‘self-branding’ as labour designed to produce emotional currency diversifies and complicates current understandings of IG participation.