Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Visibility Through Selfies: Comparing Platform Mediators Across Ruby Rose’s Instagram and Vine Presence

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between social media platforms and the production and dissemination of selfies in light of its implications for the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Applying an Actor Network Theory lens, two popular visual media apps, Instagram and Vine, are examined through a comparative walkthrough method. This reveals platform elements, or mediators, that can influence the conversational capacity of selfies in terms of the following: range, the variety of discourses addressed within a selfie; reach, circulation within and across publics; and salience, the strength and clarity of discourses communicated through a selfie. These mediators are illustrated through LGBTQ celebrity Ruby Rose's Instagram selfies and Vine videos. Instagram's use expectations encourage selfies focused on mainstream discourses of normative beauty and conspicuous consumption with an emphasis on appearance, extending through features constraining selfies' reach and salience. In contrast, Vine's broader use expectations enable a variety of discourses to be communicated across publics with an emphasis on creative, first-person sharing. These findings are reflected in Rose's Instagram selfies, which mute alternative discourses of gender and sexuality through desexualized and aesthetically appealing self-representations, while Vines display her personal side, enabling both LGBTQ and heterosexual, cisgender people to identify with her without minimizing non-normative aspects of her gender and sexuality. These findings demonstrate the relevance of platforms in shaping selfies' conversational capacity, as mediators can influence whether selfies feature in conversations reinforcing dominant discourses or in counterpublic conversations, contributing to everyday activism that challenges normative gender and sexual discourses.

Hijabers on Instagram: Using Visual Social Media to Construct the Ideal Muslim Woman

“…The first is a global consumer culture, Muslim and otherwise, accessible only to the well-to-do, constructed from a visual grammar alluding to holidays in Europe and the US, fine dining and white-collar careers. In this, the hijabers reflects a broader culture of Instagram use favoring representations of feminin-ity in keeping with a mainstream (Duguay, 2016;Marwick, 2015), and limiting women's power to their consumer power, affirming Duffy and Hund's (2015) argument that microce-lebrity culture reproduces dominant gender norms. Nevertheless, with a nod to Abidin's (2016) "subversive fri-volity," we posit that cloaking themselves in middle class consumer culture enables the hijabers to present controver-sial female subjectivities in a palatable format.…”

“…Numerous scholars have argued that the Internet expands opportunities for what Goffman (1959) calls front-stage self-making (Abidin, 2016;Duguay, 2016;Mendelson & Papacharissi, 2011;Sundén, 2003), and with the advent and popularization of web-based image-shar-ing, such self-making increasingly proceeds through strategic manipula-tion and posting of photographs. Alluding to the rise of Instagram as evidence of the increasing importance of visual texts in contemporary culture, Highfield and Leaver (2016) point to the urgent need for greater attention to images in the study of online identity performances, and Marwick (2015) argues that images offer qualitatively different resources for identity construction, and calls for new frameworks for understanding identity construction online.…”

“…According to Marwick (2013) and Duguay (2016), a cul-ture of Instagram's use-that is, modes of identity performance not determined by the technical structures of the platform, but by user understandings of acceptable comport-ment on itmakes the platform especially amenable to tam-ing or mainstreaming identity performances associated with microcelebrity. In Marwick's (2015) study, Instagrammers display an affinity for emulating "the tropes and symbols of traditional celebrity culture, such as glamourous self-portraits, designer goods and luxury cars" (p. 139).…”

The Presentation of Selfie in Everyday Life

“…Existing research has begun to question the treatment of a vast range of social media platforms as analogous entities simply due to a commonality of features, and is instead highlighting that many factors and contexts can affect the ways in which users engage with features [24]. Duguay [14] for example notes variable and specific uses of photo-sharing features across a range of platforms. Focusing upon the affordances offered is not nearly enough to understand the platform; there is also a need to consider the use of those affordances on a platform-by-platform basis in relation to the individual user as well as the intended audience.…”

Visual cross-platform analysis: digital methods to research social media images

“…One notable exception is Duguay's(2016) work on LGBTQ self-representation on Instagram and Vine, which demonstrates the viability of cross-platform work on images. Examining the different visual self-presentations by celebrity Ruby Rose' across these two platforms, Duguay suggests that two different narrative models and publics emerge.…”