Abstract:

Previously, visual creative artists found their community through their grassroots connections. Instagram has allowed creatives to spark conversations and forge connections on a global scale which has revolutionised the way visual creatives form communities. Instagram has radically changed the way solo visual artist or creatives engage with art communities due to the platforms affordances that strengthen connection, communication and identity.  Instagram is a widely accessible platform that is driven by images, users can leverage features such as hashtags and emojis to foster connections and communicate with others who share their interests.  This is significant to the digital and social media community as it highlights the role of social media in shaping creative communities.  As social media platforms evolve understanding these affordances will help creatives and developers form platforms that foster community and inclusivity.  

Solo artists or craftspeople often form and engage strong offline local communities, through building connections and relationships with others in offline spaces such as at workshops, classes, fairs, studios and community art centres. Independent creatives such as artists and/or crafts people often learn, engage and collaborate with other practitioners and form art communities with members who are based in close proximity due to the physical nature of creating visual art. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many workshops, schools and community centres were closed for prolonged periods due to the state-imposed lockdowns which meant that artists and creatives no longer had a physical space to connect and engage with others. As local spaces and community groups were “out of physical reach” for many, solo visual artists and creatives turned to social media platforms, such as Instagram, to continue their learning and development, and formed art communities to engage with others on their chosen art (O’Brien, 2024 p.252). This conference paper will argue that Instagram has radically changed the way solo visual artists or creatives engage with art communities due to the platforms affordances that strengthen connection, communication and identity. By leveraging Instagrams tools and features, such as likes, translation and hashtags, creatives can engage on a worldwide scale with others who they may not previously had access to. This has promoted diversity, inclusivity, cross-cultural connection and accessibility for solo visual artist and creatives which may not been possible in an offline art community. This conference paper has been written for the Social Media, Communities and Networks Online Conference: Debating Communities and Networks, and will form part of the Communities and Social Media stream as it will argue how social media has changed the way art communities connect and engage. First, this conference paper will argue that solo visual creators have strengthened their connections with art communities due to Instagrams affordances of being a visual image-based platform, through the tools in Instagram, and the accessibility of the platform.  Second, this conference paper will argue that because of Instagrams affordances, it has changed the way solo visual creatives can communicate and engage with art communities due to the persistent contact and pervasive awareness which Instagram provides.  Lastly, this conference paper will argue that Instagram allows solo visual creatives opportunities to form identities and share values to foster and engage with diverse art communities which may have been harder to portray in an offline community environment. This conference paper will argue this by providing a positive debate of these themes, using scholarly research, and by providing observations and examples to demonstrate the themes.

Instagram has changed the way solo creatives engage with art communities as Instagram provides opportunities for creatives to strengthen their connections by utilising the tools and features that Instagram provides. Instagram is primarily a visual based social media platform, with the majority of media content being based on photo’s, images or video. In Instagram, an individual can create either a public or private account. A public account on Instagram allows users to view content without requiring the user to follow the account. A public account enables creatives to reach a broader audience as users do not need to follow the profile to see the content. One of the unique advantages of using Instagram for independent creative practitioners is the algorithm which promotes content that has had more engagement through likes, mentions and comments, instead of following a chronological order which many other social media platforms use. This means that viewers can be fed images that have been created over a longer period of time to a different audience instead of just displaying the most recent content. Solo creatives use Instagram to promote, record and archive images of their creative works, using Instagram as a “digital memory box” (Caliandro & Graham, 2020, p.4). Users can search for content using hashtags, which can indicate what the content of the image is, the context of the image, as well as to connect to communities who have used similar hashtags (Caliandro & Graham, 2020). Due to the affordances of Instagram, such as being a visual based platform and the algorithms of Instagram, individual creatives can strengthen their connections to a broader arts community.

As Instagram is primarily a visual platform, it can facilitate connections with individuals who speak different languages which promotes inclusivity and broadens the arts community. Instagram has approximately 2 billion active users worldwide and a large majority of Instagram users reside in countries where English is not the primary language (Dixon, 2024). The American Society for Information Science (2021) indicates that due to the visual affordances of Instagram, individuals can cross language barriers to connect with communities in other countries. Individuals can communicate and engage with others through the use of likes and emojis, which provide a visual way for individuals to communicate with others. Instagram also provides an inbuilt translator tool which provides a basic translation of text service for users. While there are other translation tools users can utilize instead of Instagrams translating tool having an inbuilt application promotes inclusivity as it is accessible when required. The visual culture of Instagram allows individual creatives opportunities to connect, engage and communicate with others without requiring the need to speak the same language. For example, potters can view pottery posts from Japan, engage through following, liking and adding emojis to comments, or use translation tools if required. This visual culture and the tools that are available provide individual creators opportunities to collaborate and connect with a diverse community of users who have similar interests as themselves, which is a definite advantage to individual creators who want to communicate and engage with a diverse art community.

As user participation is encouraged in platforms such as Instagram, Creators can connect with others by using and searching hashtags. Instagrams tools such as hashtags, searching, commenting and liking encourages users to participate and engage (Arya & Mishra, 2012). For example, if a user searched #WheelthrownPottery, they would find content which relates to pottery that is thrown, as well as artists and communities who use this hashtag, and others who share these interests. This helps individual creators form connections and engage with art communities whom they may not have access to in a physical art environment as users can participate and engage through commenting and liking posts. The difference in virtual communities compared to traditional art communities is the way individuals can connect and communicate with a global community of art creatives because of how accessible the social media technologies are. Instagram is changing the way individual creatives engage with arts communities as it enables searching and engagement through connections that would be difficult to do in an offline arts community.

The ease of use and accessibility of Instagram enables individual creatives opportunities to communicate with diverse communities. While the Covid-19 pandemic was the catalyst for creatives to find online communities, the ease of use and accessibility of the platform has encouraged users to continue communicating and engaging in online communities once the lockdowns were discontinued. Instagram is free for individuals to use, allowing creative practitioners a low-cost alternative to physical spaces, where they can share their artworks, skills, and techniques. This facilitates an inclusive space as individual creatives can connect with others who want to learn and participate in crafts, from which they may have been previously excluded due to financial cost or geographical location. Instagram provides accessibility to knowledge by offering a virtual space where creatives can share. For example, a face-to-face pottery workshop in South Australia may cost an individual $100, while watching an online video on Instagram is free and can be watched anywhere in the world. This accessibility has allowed more people opportunities to participate in the arts and crafts community. O’Brien (2024) indicates that due to social media technologies there has been a current resurgence in handcrafts. As Instagram promotes and shares knowledge of the handcrafts, individuals are becoming more interested in trying out the ideas that they see. As individuals try out new ideas and identify any issues or questions, they can share their images and find answers through Instagram.

Instagram is not only facilitating connection and communication, but it is also providing a knowledge base through the skills and information of its users. As users communicate and share knowledge, they build a “collective intelligence” of information (Arya & Mishra, 2012, p. 28). This knowledge is being shared on a worldwide scale, promoting not only the sharing of knowledge of creative professional techniques but also the knowledge of novice creatives and experimentation. As more individuals have access to knowledge and share ideas, they build and contribute further information which makes the art and crafts sector more inclusive worldwide.  Instagram is changing the way individuals can contribute and engage with the arts community as it provides knowledge sharing, as well as persistent contact.

Instagram is changing the way individual creatives foster connections to the arts community due to the affordances of the platform. Instagram provides ‘persistent contact’ to other users by allowing individuals to continue following individuals over a long period of time which helps creative practitioners to maintain their connections (Hampton, 2016). For example, solo creative practitioners who have built local connections through offline environments may lose their contact when they move to a different area, Instagram allows creatives opportunities to maintain and further develop these connections through its platform. Besides maintaining contact, Instagram allows creative practitioners to declare associations with other creatives, organisations or community groups through who they follow and communicate with on Instagram through ‘pervasive awareness’ (Hampton, 2016). 

Instagram enables creative practitioners opportunities to declare their interests, activities, communities and associations with others through pervasive awareness.  Pervasive awareness is the affordance of social media which provides knowledge of an individual or groups interest, opinions, activities and social ties that users can determine from viewing their profile. For example, Instagram allows users opportunities to read the posts, comments, profiles and followers which can provide the user a glimpse into who the person is and who they associate with.  Solo creative artists or practitioners can use pervasive awareness as a strategy to build a presence or identity which reflects their goals and values. Soronen & Koivunen (2022, p. 1343) indicate that creatives social media presence is often related to the desire to “belong to a professional community of peers”. Instagram facilitates this for solo creatives due to the ability to connect and communicate with other professionals online without needing to personally know them. As artists and creatives often use Instagram to share their feelings and opinions related to their artforms, solo creatives need to be aware of who is viewing their content.

Instagram provides visibility for individual creative practitioners which can assist with building an online professional community. Individual creative practitioners need to be aware of the imagined audience in Instagram so that they can strategically craft their posts to attract the right audience for building a community (Marwick and boyd, 2011). Instagram is a networked public, which means it is an online public space where content is searchable, replicable, persistent and is available to an invisible audience (boyd, 2007). Individual creatives can create separate Instagram profiles for their professional and private content to ensure that their professional profiles contain content which they are happy to release into the public space.  As individual creative practitioners use Instagram as a way to foster community, the visibility of the platform requires users to manage their online presence to ensure their values and identity align with their goals.

The tools and features of Instagram allows independent creatives opportunities to form identities to identify and engage with creative communities. The affordance of Instagram allows creatives to form identities through the use of avatars, notes or short biographies in profiles.  Through observation it is noted that many independent creatives use images of their art or handcrafts as their avatar or profile picture. This allows users an easy way to identify what activity the account is focusing on without having to open the full profile of the account. 

Instagram has provided opportunities for creatives to declare their identity and values in a public forum which they may not have been able to do in an offline art community. Creatives and individuals who participate in handcrafts often hold values of authenticity, individuality and slow production (Amicucci, 2022). Individual creatives can use hashtags as a way to identify their values such as #handmade or #AuthenticHandmadeCrafts. Hashtags in Instagram can also signify a collective identity, which assists with promoting and declaring individual creators values (O’Brien). For example, hashtags such as #SupportLocalArtists or #SupportHandmade indicate to the viewer that the poster supports these values, and that they identify with others who supports these values. This demonstrates a collective identity and credibility for individual creatives as the declare their values which helps to identity communities which the independent creative may want to engage with. Amicucci (2022) indicates that creatives who use hashtags that identity with a collective or contain community values indicates that the poster of the content is moving beyond their individual identity to identify with a movement. By sharing their values, they are identifying with a commonality with others to engage and align with others. Instagram is changing the way solo visual artists are communicating in art communities as they can publicly declare their values and identities to unite with others, by forming connections with others who share the same.

In conclusion, this conference paper has argued that Instagram has radically changed the way solo visual artists or creatives engage with art communities due to the platforms affordances that strengthen connection, communication and identity. As Instagram is a visually based platform, and it is widely accessible, visual artists have been able to engage with others on a worldwide scale. Through using the affordances of the platform such as hashtags, emojis, searching, solo visual creatives have strengthened their connections with others in the art community. Instagram allows persistent contact, pervasive awareness and an invisible audience which helps promote, communicate and engage with others who have similar interests. Instagram provides opportunities for solo creatives to identify with others, share their values, forming connections, communities, and opportunities to continue to build an art community that is inclusive.

(CC BY-NC-ND) Under the CC BY-NC-ND licence others can copy and distribute the material in any medium or format for non commercial purposes only, as long as the material is not adapted and the creator is attributed.

References

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