Queering visibility through stancetaking: A multimodal analysis of non-binary identity representation on Instagram

Non-binary people continue to face structural invisibility, and research has only recently begun to examine how their experiences circulate on social media. Centred on visual culture, Instagram's affordances bring into view this community whose visibility has long been limited by institutional and social gatekeeping. This paper analyses how non-binary influencers represent their identities intersubjectively and multimodally on Instagram using an adaptation of Du Bois's (2007) Stance Triangle. The resulting Visual Stance Triangle (VST) operationalises evaluation, positioning and alignment across image-caption units, drawing on visual social semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2021) and visual intersubjectivity (Zhao & Zappavigna, 2018). Results identify six recurring thematic domains of non-binary visibility: POLITICAL, AESTHETIC, ORDINARY, VULNERABILITY, HOSTILITY and INTERSECTIONAL. Across these domains, visibility varies in explicitness, stance orientation and audience relation. Political posts construct collective visibility and address potential allies; vulnerable posts reframe personal disclosure as shared queer recognition; aesthetic and ordinary posts keep non-binary identity present without making it the central stance object. Overall, the findings show that non-binary visibility on Instagram is both plural and ambivalent: it can challenge binary and transnormative expectations by presenting different ways of being and appearing non-binary, while remaining exposed to misrecognition and hostile interpretations.