Overview

"capture and share the world's moments"

In our exploration of the inherent inauthenticity or authenticity of social media, we aim to gather a series of qualitative data that explores if and how social media, as both a platform representative of a larger institutional structure and personal sharing device, inhibits or promotes authentic representation of self. We understand that the term “authenticity” is often a broad and abstracted concept that correlates to an imagined state of “core” personal characteristics and values. We will add pressure to this definition in order to reconceptualize the idea of authenticity to the idea of completion. In what ways is an authentic self, in the context of social media, a complete self? Our research is primarily interview-based, utilizing both narrative and phenomenological data to explore this question of how Instagram, the company, may engage in a process of self-branding to coherence their audience into believing in the representative power of social media as a complete image of self. Possible limitations to our research reside in the lack of quantitative data. But, as this project is fairly limited to a specific timeline, we wanted to focus our energy on the exploration of Instagram through narration, as we found it to be a more powerful voice for conceptualizing the often abstracted media theory in a more personal context.

does social media inhibit authenticity?