Instagram as a device for the normalization of disobedient identity representations. A case study

Abstract

Social media is a very useful dissemination, construction, and meeting tool for social and collective movements, also in the feminist/queer sphere. However, some authors consider that their decisive role in the gender socialization processes of the new generations is not always positive, as it replicates, to a large extent, those gender stereotypes that limit and restrict free identity expression. Under this premise, the present work aims to describe and analyze the gender representations observable in Instagram photographies linked to four Galician university campuses (a total of 449 images), through a content analysis complemented by a univariate and bivariate descriptive analysis, with contingency tables, standardized residuals, and Pearson's Chi-square test. This analysis attends to objective criteria, linked to the perceptible realities of the represented bodies, and allows us to identify the strategies for the construction of online gender identities manifested by university youth in those four Galician campuses. This way, no “disobedient” gender identities have been found that operates as a laboratory for the exploration and search for new corporeities/identities, which is why we can observe a strong tendency towards normative representations. It is thus concluded that Instagram works as a legitimation tool for the binary, normative, and, therefore, hegemonic proposal.