Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Jamal Mohammadi ¹
• parniya razipor ²

¹ Associate professor of sociology at University of Kurdistan

² Ph.D. Student in Communication Sciences, Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University; Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The social network Instagram with too many audiences in Iran is followed by different strata of users. Different pages with diverse functions in this network show that users follow this social network with different purposes and intentions. This paper is an attempt to have a sociological study on this social network and to do so, it will review the field of literature critically. Then, it attempts to do a qualitative content analysis of different pages of Iranian users to categorize them according to their collective functions. The findings show that Iranian users’ pages on Instagram can be categorized into six categories based on their collective functions: News, education, marketing, services, bloggers, and yellow pages. It is concluded that Instagram’s field of activity can’t be limited merely to creating social communication but has some extraordinary potential in determining social and interpersonal relations and problems. This social network can meet the different needs of people in the field of business, information, entertainment, education, services, etc. Instagram also strengthens a participatory culture, because users are actively involved in creating and circulating new content.

Keywords

• Instagram
• content analysis
• users
• social page
• collective function

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