SOCIAL MEDIA

I’m of a generation that came to social media from its very beginnings: I joined a nascent Facebook network in 2004 while studying abroad in the USA, and became an avid user. Along with many Millennials, my Facebook usage has waned of late, though, and I’ve switched to being primarily an Instagram user. 

 

I’m very used to the popular framing that social media is either for professional purposes (advertising, business pages, networking) or it’s a time sink: a distraction, a frivolous and often solipsistic use of time and resources. My experience has been true for both of those things, but also for a third thing: a different sense of community, an enjoyable means of reflection, a lucky-packet of similar-interest global interaction. 

 

So when it came to the idea of play, Instagram seemed a good place to start. I enjoyed using the platform. I’ve also been asked to use the skills I’ve accumulated in various comms or creative jobs (usually not remunerated, but seen as valuable enough to be required). Social media seemed to be positioned very much as art is: denigrated as a personal pastime until it’s needed as a professional platform. 

 

What could Instagram offer the Play Room?

 

I realised the potential for my ideas to be ‘read’ in a different way: one that wasn’t frivolous, but wasn’t heavy either. Could I use it to capture the incidental moments, the connections I found in my travels and everyday experiences, and package these reflections in a way that was accessible beyond my regular professional networks? More, could social media be used to draw engagement from different disciplines and perspectives?

 

With TikTok’s steep rise in popularity, there has been a sustained, deliberate shift from positioning Instagram primarily as an image-sharing platform to pushing video and music-driven content. Instagram engagement analysis in 2023 revealed just how much this impacted posting. Reels were tracking at 22% more programmed interaction than standard video posts, and videos 21.2% higher engagement than photographs. 

 

I decided to take advantage of this, and make reels-only content. 

 

Tagged locations get 79% more engagement than those without geotagging, so I tended towards connecting my location. Likewise, I added several relevant hashtags to each post—all digital flags to help others find my content. While each post’s accompanying text is lengthy and relatively academic, the video content is simple, the reel format snappy, and the trending music a convenient way of riding on the coattails of popular artistic affect.

 

@Pro.Test City was born. As the tagline reads: what does it mean to be pro-test?

 

I don’t post on it particularly regularly, and didn’t make a concerted effort to mass-follow upfront to boost my engagement. Despite this, I was surprised with the accuracy and reach of the algorithm: people directly in my field were finding and following me. It was particularly exciting to see I’d reached outside of both the Capetonian and academic bubbles: I was getting academics from across the country and globe, as well as activists, NGO workers and artists. Perfectly apt demographics!

 

I deliberately decided not to add any personal identifiers on the account. You don’t see my face, you don’t hear my voice, and—beyond the telltale mutual follows—there are no visible affiliations with either myself or the ReTAGS project. This worked well. Social media, and many forums of online engagement in general, has normalised an environment of disembodied engagement. While one can have photo identifiers, and often reveal deeply personal content, it’s also considered perfectly acceptable to have an account avatar, a fictionalised name, or even—as I chose—nothing at all. What matters is the content. 

 

While it was deliberate to make the content stand-alone, I didn’t really how profoundly freeing this would feel. Positionality and embodiment is usually central to academic research and outputs, and mine necessarily affects how I see—and how others see—my work. In a South African environment, where my position as a white researcher of English descent can be understandably triggering, research possibilities can open and close based on much more than just the content of my work. What an interesting space, then, this Instagram account offered—a place where people engaged, often very positively, with my ideas on their own terms, without knowing their connection to me or my project. 

 

Simply put, Pro.Test City enabled me to play with my ideas and experiences without putting my self forward. I found it loosened up my ideas and gave me a space to air them without feeling at risk. This confidence was something I felt translate into other areas of my work. Likewise, using the digital template of the reel—something recognisable within a popular culture framework—really enabled me to lean into play, to re-present heavier ideas around urban design, commemoration and social justice in a way that led with a certain joy, which was often reflected back through likes, shares or comments.

 

My plan for the account going forward is to keep creating reel content as and when something strikes me, while leaving the account open for anyone to stumble across. The vagaries of the algorithm and hashtag / geotag linking mean that my reels are freshly stumbled across whenever a particularly location or phrase is trending again. The work of promotion and accessibility is done for me, which is both a relief and (considering algorithmic bias) potentially a concern. On balance, though, this is just the kind of digital archive I can see myself sustaining: while an interaction of it is hosted on this University server, posting and curating it is entirely in my hands going forward. 
 

 

 

 

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