Crafting the Digital Self: Exploring Instagram Self-Portraiture as an Anthropological Endeavor

Instagram is a social media platform where users upload digital images for others to like and comment on. Ostensibly, this seems to be a clear-cut reciprocal practice, but it is far more nuanced than it would initially appear. Drawing on over two years of digital ethnographic fieldwork with Instagram, this article uses images uploaded by the author to explore how digital selves are constructed in a digital landscape, how these manifestations of self-function as a research tool, and how, given sufficient material, a digital self can acquire agency in its own right. Building on a reflexive practice of self-portraiture, this article will identify the importance of engaging with the digital landscape anthropologically as a creator of content whilst also highlighting the dangers such a practice engenders. Finally, questions will be asked as to whether the digital field is one which the anthropologist never truly leaves.