Exposure to Celebrities’ Instagram Images and Its Relationship with Followers’ Perceived Self-Concept and Visual Self-Presentation

Abstract

This qualitative research aims to explore the relationship between exposure to celebrities’ Instagram images with followers’ perceived self-concept and visual self-presentation on their personal Instagram accounts. Twelve Thai students between the ages of 18-20 living in Bangkok, Thailand were selected by using non-probability sampling to participate in this research. The data, comprised of 260 personal Instagram images and in-depth interview transcriptions, were analyzed by using textual analysis and Constant Comparative Method. The findings are revealed as follow: (1) Instagram followers idealized the following photo categories depicted by celebrities’ Instagram images, namely Personal, Social Relations, Activity, Luxury Items, and Others. There are new subcategory expansions and explanation to add to the photo categories, namely “Fans”, “Plants”, and “Lyrics”. (2) There are three relationships on how Instagram followers perceive themselves in correspondence with celebrities’ Instagram images, namely followers’ actual selves are not discrepant from their ideal selves, followers’ actual selves are discrepant from ideal selves, and followers’ actual selves are discrepant yet concurrently non-discrepant from ideal selves. (3) There are two relationships on how Instagram followers visually self-present themselves on their personal Instagram accounts in correspondence with celebrities’ Instagram images, namely followers’ visual self-presentation is absent from imitating celebrities’ images, and followers’ visual self-presentation is absent yet concurrently present from imitating celebrities’ images. The results show that Instagram followers are generally capable to navigate their sense of self and postings on their personal Instagram accounts, in correspondence with exposure of celebrities’ Instagram images. This navigation is conceivable due to the similarities of followers’ selves with their ideal celebrities, the established and growing sense of self-empowerment as an individual, the followers’ interest to keep their selves authentic, and their conscious self-knowledge and first-hand experience about celebrities and pictures posted on social media. The technology affordance feature of creating a secondary Instagram account, dubbed as private account, provides followers an intimate outlet to express their truest actual selves without hesitation and judgment from the public. The aforementioned significant explanations carryback the possibilities for concurrencies between discrepancy and non-discrepancies of actual and ideal selves, as well as imitation and non-imitation of celebrities’ Instagram images, to exist.