INSTAGRAM AS AN ACTOR: THE TRANSLATION OF TOURIST EXPERIENCES ON INSTAGRAM

Abstract

Many tourists have taken to Instagram, a popular social media platform, to share their travel experiences in the form of photos and videos. This has led to changes within tourism, providing new ways for tourists to interact with the environment and reconstruct their experiences. However, while studies have acknowledged the impact of social media, most have neglected the differences between platforms. Hence, this thesis explores how tourists are sharing on Instagram, paying specific attention to how tourists negotiate between the two different modes of sharing – Instagram Posts and Instagram Stories. This places Instagram at the forefront, emphasising how tourists interact with Instagram as a unique platform with specific functions. By adopting Actor-network theory and situating Instagram as an actor within the network constituting tourist experiences, this thesis traces the various translations through which Instagram delineates its role. In interacting with the tourist gaze, a search for the extraordinary, Instagram provides new ways for tourists to reconstruct their experiences while at the same time influencing tourist photography, a performance of the gaze. In addition, Instagram stories, an instantaneous form of sharing, has been woven into the tourist experience where tourists have to balance between undivided immersion within experience and sharing the moment with a virtual audience. This thesis thus concludes that Instagram not only represents the tourist experience, but has also becomes a part of it.