Week 1

Choose a social media site that you are a member of and say why you engage with it and what you get out of it. If you are not a member of any site, choose one to observe and answer the same question regarding the activities that you observe – or, you may choose to say why you do not normally engage with social media. You are encouraged to use your answers to exercise 1.3 to frame your response.

Instagram is a social media site that I engage with on a regular basis. In the six families of Fred Cavazza’s ‘Social Media Landscape’, Instagram falls under ‘sharing’ (Holmes 2016, p.15). The site exists as a platform that allows user to share snippets of their lives through pictures and more recently short videos. 

Instagram gives users the chance to create an online presence through pictures and videos. I personally use the site as a way to keep up to date with friends and family as well as to follow celebrities, brands and personalities. It is an example I believe of what Yochai Benkler was talking about when he said that social media sites allowed for "a thickening of pre-existing relations with family, friends and neighbours, particularly those who were not easily reachable in  the pre-Internet-mediated society" (Holmes 2016, p.3). Through Instagram, I am afforded a glimpse into the activities of people's lives in a way that I did not have prior. I also enjoy that my feed consists only of pictures and videos posted by other users and is not cluttered by other links/advertisements etc. in the same way that my Facebook feed is. I enjoy that I can curate my own feed to a certain extent through choosing who I follow and who I ignore. 

I am more a passive user of Instagram. I enjoy scrolling through my feed several times a day but only upload my own content rarely. Through observing my relationship with this social media site, I have found that I mostly engage with Instagram as a way to 'keep up' with what other people are doing.


References:

Holmes, A 2016, Week 1: Social Media topical introduction, course notes, DGTL12002: Understanding Social Media, CQUniversity e-courses, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au