Undergraduate Research: “Love at First Like”

Abstract: This thesis is a digital ethnographic study of University students in the Denver-Boulder metro area, aged 18-24, and their use of Instagram and online dating applications. While scholars have previously studied digital ethnography, and analyses of online discourse, this thesis aims to understand the real-world implications of participation on the "virtual" or digital application of Instagram. These implications are regarding the commodification of identities, the construction of envy and desire by means of performative and painful vulnerability, as well as the development of real romantic relationships. While users and scholars alike may dismiss social media and online interactions as being "fake" this ethnography provides insight into the very real impact of Instagram on college students in the Denver-Boulder metro area.

Excerpt:

“Recent scholarship in the anthropology of online communities has suggested that the emergence of online profiles has allowed for a new mode of identity construction. Further, as this work suggests, online profile identities are not static or limited to the virtual realm, but often seep into other environments and settings for communication (Wilson et al. 2002). Scholars have discussed how people view themselves as individuals and the impact that this has on the mediated representations that they create of themselves, and how this can contrast or align with their greater cultural and collective identities as members of society (Wilson et al. 2002). Wilson et al. suggests that ethnographers contextualize mediated identities, arguing that individuals' identities on social media fall within the greater context of their overall identities—in other words, researchers should examine "virtual" and "real" as situational rather than dichotomous cases of the same identity (Wilson et al. 2002). Importantly, the internet as an avenue of identity construction has not created an alternate reality, but rather expands upon existing cultural roles and ideologies; although the online environment is different, researchers have found continuity in the social positions assumed by social media users on and offline (Wilson et al. 2002). 11 In my thesis, I investigate how the expansion of young people's social roles into online contexts plays out in and through the romantic connections that these online sites often facilitate. I am particularly interested in how college students incorporate social media in their everyday experiences of dating and intimacy. As I will argue, online practices of flirting and courtship are particularly revealing of how young people construct themselves and perceive others online through a balance of vulnerability and control. Flirting on Instagram, I will argue, is largely a question of young people seeking to establish themselves as attractive and worthy of others' attention interest while also asserting independence and emotional detachment.

….The increasingly public and performance-like nature of modern identities has only been enhanced by the introduction of social media. I argue that as interactions move seamlessly across physical space and digital platforms, interpersonal relationships take on the performative and aspirational qualities that scholars have discussed as characteristic features of capitalist identity and selfhood (Crawford, 2009; Illouz, 2007; Jones et al. 2011; Zelizer 2010). Jones et al. has described the virtual environment of social media with regards to perception, judgement and attraction as a “charged arena of self-display and mutual scrutiny in which participants construct desire,” clearly addressing the ways in which this self-branding is not only limited to financial profit, but with attraction and physical desire as well (Jones et al. 2011: 7). In my own research, I have found that college students experience a tension between what they take to be their authentic selves and private senses of vulnerability with the possibility of representing themselves in an unrealistic and idealized way on social media. Therefore, I argue that a kind of commodification of the self, or an extension of one's identity into the realm of market exchange, is no longer confined to the experiences of celebrities and individuals that represents brands or corporations, but has become a key feature of how almost all social media users interact with their peers and present themselves on digital platforms.”