Читать книгу Instagram - Tama Leaver, Crystal Abidin - Страница 11

In this first chapter, we explore the emergence and history of Instagram as an app and, quite quickly, a platform. While the term platform is a loaded one (Gillespie 2010), the use of the term here is specifically to draw attention to the fact that Instagram is more than one thing: it is an app; it is a series of programs and algorithms; it is a gigantic database of images, videos, captions, comments, geolocative tags, location tags, likes, emoji and more and more items over time; it is a collection of personal data (connected with similar sets of personal data after the purchase by Facebook); it is an application program interface (API) which enacts rules to allow different apps, platforms and partners to access, add or remove data from the Instagram database; it is a series of decisions and developments over time that create different versions of each of these things; and it also encapsulates various popular understandings of what Instagram ‘is’ to the more than a billion people who use it. In short, describing Instagram as a platform offers a continual reminder that Instagram is many different things, some at the same time, and some that have quite radically changed over time.

Similarly, in discussing the politics of Instagram, we are not talking about the political influence of the platform (although that is important, and explored near the end of this chapter), but rather we are highlighting the importance of specific decisions and changes which have made Instagram what it is today. While we’re outlining some of the major events and decisions that have shaped Instagram, this chapter is by no means exclusive; for a more robust change-by-change outline of Instagram, see the Appendix which offers a chronology of Instagram’s various versions and alterations. In this chapter, we are focusing on a few of the bigger changes and moments that have shaped the platform, and use these to situate the platform, and the company, in a broader context. In exploring Instagram, we are always mindful of the broader visual social media landscape of which Instagram is a part, but hope that this exploration of Instagram illuminates more about this broader context as well.