The social media platform I will be analyzing is my Instagram page. Social media as a whole has allowed the people that use it to transform into a persona anybody can see, whether if it’s really how they are or not. I had never taken into consideration of closely analyzing my Instagram page. However, I have discovered the differences between myself and how I perceive myself to be behind a phone screen. Let’s begin with how long I have had this page, which has been since 2013. If I remember, I started this account because it was becoming very popular at the time and all my friends were making one as well. Since I started, the platform has changed in so many ways, just by the layout of it and added features such as Instagram stories. Throughout the years my posts and captions have also and still are changing.
I have heard Instagram be compared to Facebook, but Instagram is used more for capturing moments while Facebook is used for connecting with friends and family. It involves friending other people and being able to see what they post which has to be a photo with a caption, unlike Facebook where you can just post a few sentences on your wall. Your “timeline” consists of the posts that your friends have posted most recently. I go on this site about twice a day maybe more depending on if I’m just sitting around bored and want to see what’s new. I primarily use this site to be able to see what my friends are doing back home especially now that I’m not really able to see them as much as I did before. It helps me see what current events my friends are up to at the colleges they are attending.
My typical visit starts at the top of my timeline and I work my way down until I’ve reached the point I finished at last time, then I will watch Instagram stories and go to the popular page and see what is there. The popular page consists of what Instagram thinks you would be interested in looking at based off of what I have previously searched, which mostly includes makeup tutorials and sometimes even soap videos…. Before Snapchat became popular this was the only social media site that I had and was very frequent with, but now I spend more time on snapchat because I’m able to see what my friends are up to in that exact moment, which sounds a little creepy but it’s interesting to keep up with them.
On my Instagram page I present myself as being a first-year college student with great friends and cares about family. I accomplish this through the photos I choose to post on my page and by adding a short, concise and sometimes funny caption to attract the audience. On average I post about once or twice a month, but I have tried to post more frequently as special occasions come up. When going out with friends or family I always keep in mind to get a good photo at the start of the night that I will be able to post later. Some of the conventions that I noticed while looking at my page is that I always keep my captions short and post an emoji along with my captions. It wasn’t something that I planned to do on every picture but after I thought about it I do it because it just shows my emotions toward the photo whether it’s a smiley face, a heart, or an image of what happened in the photo. I feel like it ties the picture together really well and I will continue to keep adding an emoji on every post with knowledge of doing it this time.
This photo was posted in October of 2017 it is a photo of my best friend and I from back home. This photo was taken during fall break when I was finally able to go back home since moving to Fort Worth. It took a while to find a perfect day and time that would accommodate my whole group of friends, but I was finally able to see all my friends that I graduated with. We made a date to go have dinner and go bowling after. This photo was taken at the bowling alley and it was actually not planned or posed for, I sat down to give my friend Maya a hug and my other friend had her phone out and took a picture and we both just smiled. We had so much fun this night just catching up on how college was treating was, we talked about the classes we were taking, if they were easy or hard, and we also talked about the friends we have been making. Overall, we had lots of fun and I shared this image to show how happy I was to see them. It really shows the audience the friendship side of me towards my friends. To convince the audience and to get an emotional response, I added in my caption that “I missed them so much” referring to my group of friends that I hadn’t seen in so long. This caption shows the audience that I really care for them and missed them.
The process that occurs before I post a photo is first to find the high quality one that I and whoever is in the photo with me look pretty good in. Then I raise the brightness of it to make it look like I took it on a professional camera rather than an iPhone. Once this is done it takes a while for me to think of a caption depending on if I want it to be funny to the audience or to be genuine towards the context of the photo.
This photo of my nephew and I was posted in January 2018 and is one of my most recent posts. My nephews name is Ronan and if you can spot the papers that are behind me on the left you may not be able to tell but he was having a blast tearing those up. My mom decided to take some photos of us and this photo is actually one of many that were taken, if you can imagine it was very difficult to get a good one considering he had just turned a year old and would not sit still. I also managed to get him to look at the camera while my mom was also struggling to take the picture without moving so much. Over Christmas break in 2017 my mom and I took a trip to go see my brother and his family in Arizona. During our time there, we took a drive to the Grand Canyon on New Year’s Day. The exact location of this photo is the hotel we stayed at in Flagstaff near the canyon, which was how we spent our New Year’s Eve celebration. We were in a town we were not familiar with, so it was hard to find out what the events were going to be that night. We still had lots of fun being together and watching the ball drop on TV in Times Square. To grab the emotion of my audience I posted this picture of my nephew because he is so adorable. I used the caption “a great way to spend the end of 2017 and the start of 2018” to show the audience what I did during New Year’s Eve and Day. This picture is important to me because it shows that family is a big part of my life especially when I am able to see my niece and nephew grow up.
In conclusion the way I perceive myself on any type of social media is important to me because anyone is able to access it and make quick judgements off of what they see. Because of this I am very careful with what I post and keep in mind that once I click post it will be out there forever no matter what. I want my audience to be able to see the fun that I’m having and share the memories I make with them. I chose these two photos because it talks about the two most important things in my life, family and friends. No matter what kind of persona I make myself to be on social media they always know who I really am and love me for that, just as I do them.