Approaching Instagram data: reflections on accessing, archiving and anonymising visual social media

ABSTRACT

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, making it a key site for social examination. Despite this, scholarly conversations about analysing Instagram data remain scarce, with existing research focusing on text-driven platforms such as Twitter.

This year, Instagram permanently disabled access to its Legacy API. For users, this has been hailed as positive, increasing privacy and control. However, these actions have unintentional impacts on research, creating significant access barriers. How researchers continue to engage with Instagram data as ‘personal data’ is a central question, particularly in light of global privacy events like Cambridge Analytica.

This article contributes to emerging discussions about approaching visual social media, responding to ethical and policy challenges of Instagram data. It details the process of accessing, archiving and anonymising Instagram data from a three-year platform study. Social research now encounters multiple commercial gatekeepers, where third-party applications are pivotal, and paywalls widen access inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Instagram
• research methods
• visual social media
• data privacy
• API
• Cambridge Analytica

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by Velux Foundation (2017-2021) through the grant for the research group Images of Conflict, Conflicting Images. Furthermore, the author is grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their helpful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. (Carah & Shaul, 2016).

2. TinEye (https://tineye.com/), Google reverse image search (https://images.google.com/).

3. e.g. Face Pixelizer – https://www.facepixelizer.com/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Velux Fonden.

Notes on contributors

Ally McCrow-Young

Ally McCrow-Young is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Communication, Section of Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research examines the intersection of visual social media, global conflicts and mediatised rituals, and currently focuses on the Oceania region. Ally is a core member of the research group ‘Images of Conflict, Conflicting Images’ which explores how digital images and connective media transform the way conflicts are represented.