Active and passive communication and interaction : a netnographic approach to Instagram

Abstract: Over the years, social media has become the main source of communication for alot of users. It is undoubtedly the easiest and fastest way to reach people from allover the world and build friendships, interact, share content and experiences. Oneof the main platforms with this exact use is Instagram, which is this study’s empiricaldomain. This paper studies Instagram’s Interactions tab, namely the three ways ofcommunicating through the platform: likes, comments, story replies. This new feature isable to store the data of these three items on the platform itself; data that waspreviously not so easily available. With a netnographic approach of a documentanalysis on five participants and their Interactions, combined with qualitative pre-study interviews, the data is gathered and compared, viewing participant’sperceptions vs the reality of how they use the platform. This data also revealed whatpart of Instagram and its system users interact with the most, both passively andactively. The study revealed that most users claim to be passive and, in fact, are.They are also aware of the possible negative connotations of using Instagrampassively, but see it as a much easier and faster way of interaction, than the activeone.