The production of space through transmediated identity practices: Spatial self in Instagram at Mavibahçe Shopping Centre in İzmir

Abstract

Widespread use of locative media and its integration with social media applications has provided individuals with the new ways of identity practices. Through checking in at locations, uploading still and moving images of/with certain spaces, and adding hashtags to proliferate meanings, space has turned into a stage where self-identities are digitally practiced. Within this context, this article explores the production of space through these practices on Instagram in the case study of Mavibahçe Shopping Center in Izmir, Turkey. The analysis based on questionnaires and digital media surveys targets the converged space of the same digital and physical location of Mavibahçe with the aim of providing insights into the use of space for identity constructions. The study concludes that visitors reproduce space through transmediated identity practices in Instagram in order to demonstrate their affiliations to certain lifestyles as part of their digital habitus. While they perform these acts, they prefer to use the spatial attributes that they favor as the background setting of their spatial self and tag only affirmative hashtags for their spatial experiences along with these representations, which reproduce the space of the chosen architectural settings in the digital media.