Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Professor of Sociology Department. Allameh Tabataba'i University - Tehran - Iran.
2 Associated Professor Department of Women Studies. Allameh Tabataba'i University
3 Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Many scholars believe that social media has changed the everyday communication and social structures especially for margin groups like women. This study aims to find how Instagram influences representation of women’s everyday life, and how do women try to represent their everyday life in cyberspace?
The research is based on a phenomenology approach and thematic analysis of the 800 post from 26 Instagrammer’s pages and their comments. This study aims to understand what are the most important themes represented by women about family roles, the body, consumption and satisfaction, by investigation on the connotation of their photos and captions in pages.
Results indicates the following types of themes: first: motherhood and ideal home ; subjectivity coupled with power, Second: representation of male-female identities and identity’s paradoxes, third: representation of satisfaction in the family, conspicuous consumption and beauty . Also the results shows that Instagram has identity and leisure function for women.
Data analysis shows that they use the cyberspace to challenge reality of public sphere that has caused be living in a paradoxical life world which makes women neither be objects of male dominance as they are in traditional clichés, nor be sovereign subject who is capable to deconstruct gendered patterns. Rather, they simultaneously have degrees of subjectivity and objectivity that empowers them to ignore some degrees of male dominance or to negotiate them, because there are some possibilities in social media and cyberspace like Instageram.
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