Instagram began as a photo and video sharing social networking service in 2010. The evolution of Instagram from just sharing of images to creating successful small businesses, to just give an instance, is mindboggling. The transition from using the site on the desktop to an app, first introduced for android users in 2012, evidenced its download more than a million times within a day. From then on, Instagram has been continuously reinventing itself, creating possibilities catering to the user generation. Today Instagram in itself is a small world where users make use of features like “stories”, “reels”, “posts”, etc., which are not just visually appealing as a means of entertainment, but can be viewed as an imagistic extension of their lives. It will not be wrong to say that there is a “real” world and the “Instagram” world which are in a symbiotic alliance with each other. This visual world exhibits regular users who share both their mundane and out of the ordinary events on a regular basis. At the same it has “influencers” who have an impact with the Instagram audience to behave in a particular manner, be it in the context of creating food, visiting unusual places, wearing innovatively designed clothes, engaging in DIY projects to decorate ones’ home etc.
The above is replete with the building of a culture containing an extension of human social lives which can act as a stirring arena to study and research. This paper makes an attempt to deliberate about the use of existing ethnographic research methods to study this new visual world and the high-end visual experience it offers. It will also endeavour to devise and discuss new ways of investigating this digital platform to comprehend the ever changing engagement that it involves in with its users and spectators.
