The Insta-Gaze: investigating the endurance of stereotypes of Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT Instagram – the widely popular photo sharing app – impacts how people imagine places, making it a useful platform for cultural geographers to examine the power of representation in our contemporary era. Utilizing visual methodologies, we analyze popular images on Instagram that deal with the topic of everyday life in Africa to understand not only what gets represented but what resonates with viewers/consumers. Our analysis focuses on one of the most popular Africa-themed Instagram accounts – @everydayafrica – to interrogate the power of social media platforms on geographic imaginations. To get at user perceptions, we collected information on which images were most liked and commented on and analyzed whether these images reinforce or work against extant stereotypes of Africa to interrogate how and whether decolonial resistance in representation is possible on a digital platform dependent on sharing and liking content. We used postcolonial scholarship to identify controlling images of the continent and examined whether users were more responsive to common tropes. Overall, we found that the most-liked images reinforce existing stereotypes and in so doing replicate the colonial gaze. We contend that the way Africa is visually consumed has real, material consequences.