HOW TO BE AUTHENTIC: a visual social semiotic approach to travel photography on Instagram
(2019) SKOM12 20191Department of Strategic Communication
- Abstract
- Due to their high level of authenticity, travel bloggers started to be an important part of the influencer strategies adopted by corporations in the travel industry and are becoming increasingly popular among social media users, especially on Instagram. However, their practices under this commercial pressure, on a platform known to present an idealized version of reality and by expressing themselves through a medium (photographs) that has lost its status as a credible representation of reality, raise dilemmas as to how authenticity is created and maintained. Most existing research regards the notion of authenticity as ontologically stable and fixed and therefore fails to acknowledge it as a dynamic concept that can be created. By adopting... (More)
- Due to their high level of authenticity, travel bloggers started to be an important part of the influencer strategies adopted by corporations in the travel industry and are becoming increasingly popular among social media users, especially on Instagram. However, their practices under this commercial pressure, on a platform known to present an idealized version of reality and by expressing themselves through a medium (photographs) that has lost its status as a credible representation of reality, raise dilemmas as to how authenticity is created and maintained. Most existing research regards the notion of authenticity as ontologically stable and fixed and therefore fails to acknowledge it as a dynamic concept that can be created. By adopting a processual conceptualization of authenticity and through a detailed visual analysis of a travel influencer’s profile, this study drew from the perspectives of Eco and Kress & van Leeuwen and investigated how different semiotic cues participate in the creation of authenticity in the staged circumstances that surround travel blogging. The results suggest that what is important for creating authenticity does not rely on the authenticity of the picture itself, but on the configuration of different cues, such as positioning of the participants, their actions, salience, colors, symbolic elements, angle, social distance, etc. that together form a consistent construction of an authentic experience. Thus, the research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by explaining how travel influencers’ visual communication is used on social media to create authenticity for their audience. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8987539
- author
- Miotti, Taylor LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SKOM12 20191
- year
- 2019
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Authenticity, Instagram, Personal Branding, Travel Influencers, Visual Communication, Visual Social Semiotics
- language
- English
- id
- 8987539
- date added to LUP
- 2019-08-19 15:36:37
- date last changed
- 2019-08-19 15:36:37
@misc{8987539,
abstract = {{Due to their high level of authenticity, travel bloggers started to be an important part of the influencer strategies adopted by corporations in the travel industry and are becoming increasingly popular among social media users, especially on Instagram. However, their practices under this commercial pressure, on a platform known to present an idealized version of reality and by expressing themselves through a medium (photographs) that has lost its status as a credible representation of reality, raise dilemmas as to how authenticity is created and maintained. Most existing research regards the notion of authenticity as ontologically stable and fixed and therefore fails to acknowledge it as a dynamic concept that can be created. By adopting a processual conceptualization of authenticity and through a detailed visual analysis of a travel influencer’s profile, this study drew from the perspectives of Eco and Kress & van Leeuwen and investigated how different semiotic cues participate in the creation of authenticity in the staged circumstances that surround travel blogging. The results suggest that what is important for creating authenticity does not rely on the authenticity of the picture itself, but on the configuration of different cues, such as positioning of the participants, their actions, salience, colors, symbolic elements, angle, social distance, etc. that together form a consistent construction of an authentic experience. Thus, the research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by explaining how travel influencers’ visual communication is used on social media to create authenticity for their audience.}},
author = {{Miotti, Taylor}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{HOW TO BE AUTHENTIC: a visual social semiotic approach to travel photography on Instagram}},
year = {{2019}},
}