Selfies on Instagram : a sociological interpretation of the presentation of the self

Abstract

I intend to investigate from a sociological perspective how Instagram users present themselves to others through selfies on this social media platform. Instagram is mostly used for posting and sharing photos with others either through posts or stories; a more detailed description will be given in the following chapter. The sample for this study was divided into two groups where on one hand I targeted social media influencers and on the other looked at youth common users who make use of social media hence explaining the difference between the types of participants. Moreover, the difference in status between the participants will also be analysed to see whether there are any issues effecting the presentation of the self on Instagram. The following chapters of this dissertation will seek to explain better my intentions within this area. Firstly, this chapter will be followed by a theoretical chapter which will be made up of various concepts and perspectives explored during the review process of the topic. I opted to split this topic into sub-sections which includes areas that are significant to the overall topic. The subsequent methodology chapter will discuss the methods used for data collection and also the structure of the study. Lastly, the Data Analysis chapter will analyse the content gathered through the data collection process and present the findings. In the final conclusion chapter, I will apply sociological concepts found within the literature review (Chapter 2) in response to the research questions.