Modern traditionalists? Content analysis of photos published by Instamatches on Instagram in the light of the concept of displaying families

The aim of the pro­ject was to ana­ly­se nor­ma­ti­ve pat­terns of mother­ho­od and its visu­al repre­sen­ta­tions, as well as domi­nant mater­nal disco­ur­ses on Insta­gram. The the­ore­ti­cal fra­me­work and metho­do­lo­gi­cal inspi­ra­tion for the stu­dy was the con­cept of display­ing fami­lies by Janet Finch, which is rooted in the para­digm of prac­ti­ce the­ory and assu­mes the impe­ra­ti­ve of demon­stra­ting fami­ly­ho­odin the pro­cess of its «pro­duc­tion» and obta­ining social legitimacy.

In this stu­dy, I con­duc­ted a quali­ta­ti­ve con­tent ana­ly­sis with semio­tic ele­ments to ana­ly­ze the 100 most popu­lar ima­ges out of 1,724 pho­to­gra­phs publi­shed by a selec­tion of ten popu­lar paren­ting influ­en­cers – Insta­mo­thers – over a period of six mon­ths. In order to select the sam­ple, for five days, from 30 March to 3 April 2020, I obse­rved selec­ted hash­tagsused by Insta­mat­ches on Insta­gram. Of the pro­fi­les that posted at least one pho­to tag­ged with at least one selec­ted hash­tagduring the obse­rva­tion period, I selec­ted the ten most popu­lar, exc­lu­ding pro­fi­les of cele­bri­ties and public figu­res known for the­ir acti­vi­ties other than in the social media spa­ce. Next, all the pho­to­gra­phs ava­ila­ble on the selec­ted pro­fi­les, which were posted six mon­ths back, were coded accor­ding to the date of publi­ca­tion, the num­ber of likes and com­ments, and the people depic­ted. In this way, I col­lec­ted 1724 pho­to­gra­phs, from among which I selec­ted the 10 most popu­lar ones from each pro­fi­le, and the selec­ted hun­dred pho­to­gra­phs were sub­jec­ted to quali­ta­ti­ve ana­ly­sis with ele­ments of semiology.

The way of selec­ting the sam­ple resul­ted from using the con­cept of display­ing fami­lies also as a metho­do­lo­gi­cal inspi­ra­tion. I assu­med, in accor­dan­ce with the assump­tions of this con­cept, that the effec­ti­ve­ness of display­ing depends on social­ly reco­gni­sed meanings ascri­bed to the demon­stra­ted prac­ti­ces, and thus the reac­tion they evo­ke in obse­rvers plays an impor­tant role in this pro­cess. I assu­med that the most popu­lar Insta­mo­thers, being suc­cess­ful, expres­sed in the num­ber of likes and fol­lo­wers of the­ir pro­fi­les, con­duct effec­ti­ve display­ing of the­ir mater­nal prac­ti­ces, i.e. they demon­stra­te mother­ho­od accor­ding to nor­ma­ti­ve pat­terns, and that the ima­ges that aro­use the gre­atest appro­val of Insta­gram users pre­sent the most domi­nant ima­ges of mother­ho­od (hen­ce the metho­do­lo­gi­cal deci­sion to ana­ly­se the pho­to­gra­phs with the highest num­ber of likes).

The stu­dy con­duc­ted in this way does not, of cour­se, allow us to answer the question of what mother­ho­od of Insta­mo­thersactu­al­ly looks like. The the­ore­ti­cal per­spec­ti­ve adop­ted, howe­ver, made it possi­ble to look at the col­lec­ted pho­to­gra­phs from a bro­ader per­spec­ti­ve – thro­ugh the prism of the meanings they pro­du­ce and repro­du­ce and the domi­nant disco­ur­ses in which they are entan­gled. Three main conc­lu­sions emer­ge from the stu­dy. Fir­stly, the display­ingof popu­lar Insta­mo­therswas stron­gly cor­re­la­ted with nor­ma­ti­ve exter­nal fac­tors, such as the fami­ly model in which mother­ho­od is reali­sed (the tra­di­tio­nal hete­ro­nor­ma­ti­ve fami­ly model domi­na­ted here), or the way in which other roles were play­ed out in the fami­ly (e.g. the role of the father). Secon­dly, the col­lec­ted mate­rial indi­ca­tes the repro­duc­tion of the tra­di­tio­nal divi­sion of roles in the fami­ly (both at the level of repre­sen­ta­tions of parents and chil­dren) and the repro­duc­tion of gen­der ste­reo­ty­pes. Thir­dly, the vision of mother­ho­od pre­sen­ted by Insta­mo­thersas the cen­tral point in a woma­n’s life, being a sour­ce of joy and ful­fil­ment despi­te dif­fi­cul­ties, to some extent fits the figu­re of the Polish Mother, with simul­ta­ne­ous impo­si­tion of new pres­su­res on mothers con­nec­ted with the pur­su­it of per­fectful­fil­ment of this role, inc­lu­ding taking care of home spa­ce arran­ge­ment and phy­si­cal attractiveness.