The unwritten rules of instagram Daniel Roetzer Intercultural Communication and Social Media Culture Norms of Instagram: is compliance synonymous with popularity / positive response?

My Project As most of us are regular users of the social media platform., we are all aware that there are certain norms and cultural ideals that exist within the site – that users either consciously or subconsciously follow Some of these “norms” include, but are not limited to : posting pictures at the right time of day, using filters and other third party editing apps, having a “good” following to follower ratio A Buzzfeed article on the topic suggests that some norms are : only uploading pictures WORTHY of an upload (significant events), no more than two hashtags under your pic, no inspirational quotes, and no collages My study did not research what the norms are – rather – attempted to understand if this affects response

Methodology Quantitative Digital questionnaire asking individuals about their Instagram habits (in the lens of the “norms” Ten Questions Age (in brackets) Length of participation # of followers Do you follow more people than the amount of people who follow you? On average how often do you post a photo to your Instagram? Subject matter of posts (i.e., pets, family, food, selfies, fiends, traveling, #TBT, etc) How do you edit your pictures? (filter, brightness, 3rd party apps, other, none) On average, your amount of likes On average, amount of comments Do you have a preferred time of day to post to Instagram?

Methodology Qualitative I also qualitatively examined individuals public profiles to find patterns in following the norms and the response EX) Jess Hujack. 631 followers, 541 following, filters photos, but posts multiple times/daily Average Like Amount: 7

Some survey results of 77 responses, I will touch on two trends I found here Out of 77 surveys – 41.5 % (highest) post only a few times a month 46.2% said that most of their pictures are friends, and the second highest response (travel photos) with 27.9% Those who responded with these answers to these categories reported having an average “like” amount of 100-150 (a considerably good/impressive amount) Seldomly posting photos, of relevant topics or events, are among the most essential norms that we follow. In return, those who do reported a high “like” and “follower” bracket