Becoming a semiotic technology – a historical study of Instagram's tools for making and sharing photos and videos

ABSTRACT

Since October 2010, Instagram has provided its users with photo filters and other visual communication features with which they are changing the semiotic landscape of mobile photography. These tools, used to make and share images, are continuously updated. While these functionalities have been studied from a synchronic perspective, a diachronic study of their semiotic and interactive features has been overlooked. The purpose of this article is to investigate the design history of the tools in Instagram's mobile user interface.

Drawing on a social semiotic multimodal framework, this article presents an analysis of selected tools in the Instagram mobile user interface from 2010 until 2017. It reports on the findings of how tools changed quantitatively and qualitatively. Three interrelated developments are tracked: the number of tools, their semiotic representation and the potential meaning of these. Subsequently, the study shows that the Instagram application makes knowledge and skills available to a community of amateurs that used to be reserved for professional photographers. Thus, the study characterises the ways Instagram as a semiotic technology over time has facilitated and structured visual meaning-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Instagram
• semiotic technology
• software updates
• design history
• multimodality

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewer and Managing Editor Niels Brügger for their insightful comments and useful suggestions that helped me to improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Søren Vigild Poulsen

Søren Vigild Poulsen (PhD) is an assistant professor in Multimodality at the University of Southern Denmark, Department of Language and Communication, Slagelse. His research focuses on digital media and social media, websites, social semiotic and cognitive approaches to multimodal analysis. His teaching includes digital communication, marketing and web design.