John D. Boy & Justus Uitermark - On Display: Instagram, the Self, and the City

When: 2021-09-06 14:00-16:00 (Tallinn time)
Where: CUDAN Open Lab (online)

Websites: https://www.jboy.space & https://www.justusuitermark.nl/ Video of the seminar: https://youtu.be/CXR-E8ibmm4

Abstract – Prof. John D. Boy from Leiden University and Prof. Justus Uitermark from University of Amsterdam give a lecture at the CUDAN Open Lab Seminar Series. This talk provides an advance glimpse of our book about Instagram, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Our book examines how a platform that is unfailingly polished and ruthlessly judgmental shapes us and our environments. The book builds on sociological theory and long-term qualitative inquiry, but augments the picture with computational analyses. In this way, it illuminates the mutual constitution of social structures and sensibilities. Through computational analysis we reveal the uneven structure of digital networks, while interviews and ethnographic vignettes provide an account of the desires and anxieties channeled and induced by Instagram and the broader ecosystem of social media. Over the book’s seven chapters, we develop several arguments that challenge common assumptions about social media in order to advance public and scholarly debates on major social and cultural phenomena of our time.