Text on Instagram as emerging genre: A framework for analyzing discursive communication on a visual platform

Abstract

Against the backdrop of Instagram’s transforming platform culture, this contribution proposes a framework for analyzing text posts as form of discursive communication. Text posts on the formerly mainly visual platform are understood as both a new social media genre and an emerging social practice. First, the genre is contextualized and grounded by recent evidence of a modal expansion, as well as through the reconstruction of transforming platform affordances. Secondly, based on long-term online ethnographic involvement and data collection, recurring categories and properties are identified within the emerging genre and differentiated in four discursive dimensions: text types, forms of (re)mediation, stance, and tonality. Variations within the dimensions are further distinguished and illustrated and their relevance scrutinized. These discursive dimensions are designed to be used as heuristics and / or analytical categories in combination with various methodological approaches from in-depth qualitative explorations to large-scale automated analyses. Finally, possible broader sociocultural implications of the emerging genre are discussed.