PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
John D. Boy is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Leiden University, where he coordinates the d12n Research Cluster. Justus Uitermark is Professor of Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam. He also serves as Academic Director for the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research.
By drawing together granular stories of everyday life and extrapolating visual trends via computational data, Boy and Uitermark uncover how users navigate their social status, social lives, and social spaces through the delicate inter-weaving of social ties on Instagram. On Display's focus on Amsterdam on Instagram is central reading for understanding how digital life worlds, mediatized realities, and networked socio-geographies become integral for reflexive contradictions and productive tensions arising from life on the 'gram.' * Abidin, co-author of Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures * This fascinating book takes a snapshot of how Amsterdam is represented on Instagram to explore provocative questions of class, status, and hierarchy. Rather than functioning as a public square or fostering activism, Boy and Uitermark find that Instagram encourages feel-good aesthetics and conformity, privileging the viewpoints of the city's most privileged residents. Meticulously researched and full of lively accounts from a range of Instagram users, On Display asks us to consider how our social lives and very sense of self are impacted by the social platforms we use. * Alice E. Marwick, author of The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media * In this groundbreaking study, Boy and Uitermark focus on Instagram as a mediator of everyday life. Their emphasis on the importance of social status in social media is especially productive, and so too are the connections they make to a specific urban context. All this makes the book essential reading for anyone interested in cities, digital media, and social life. * Gillian Rose, co-author of The New Urban Aesthetic: Digital Experiences of Urban Change * Boy and Uitermark offer a remarkably innovative interrogation of Instagram's everyday users that underlines the perplexing ambiguity of all visual social media. Their nuanced interpretation reveals Instagram's confounding capacity to enable both the competitive display of social status and the sincere performance of the authentic self. This book deserves our deep attention. * Sharon Zukin, author of The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech, and the New Economy *
