Understanding Social Media Shopping : Instagram and the reconfiguration of the practice of shopping

In the recent past, social media has gradually evolved from a platfrom for communication and personal exchange to a space where contemporary consumer desires are awakened, directed, and also fulfilled. Instagram, in particular, is one of the social media platforms that has made specific design decisions to combine the social and entertaining aspects of the native, virtual social media experience with shopping and consumption. At the same time, Instagram and similar platforms have become an integral and meaningful part of many people’s daily routines.Based on these considerations, this dissertation examines the consequences of introducing social media to thepractice of shopping. Using a sociomaterial practice approach, it examines how social media – as a sociomaterial assemblage – reconfigures shopping. Drawing on a digital ethnography centering on Instagram as the research field for collecting empirical material, it conceptualizes and vividly illustrates how social media shopping is emerging as a new form of shopping, what defines, enables, and constrains it, and shows how social media ultimately shapes practical shopping enactments.Moreover, this work conceptualizes the social media shopper as a hybrid actor that is shaped and constituted by both virtual and analog, both human and non-human entities. It presents how this actor, referred to as the ”social media shopper”, is gradually taking shape in and through practice, while also pointing to the consequences that this form of shopping has for its practitioners’ everyday lives. It is shown that social media shopping can be both a leisure activity and a demanding profession – often resulting in practitioners having to meet different demands at the same time. For example, they often feel challenged as they must simultaneously cater to their audience and their personal relationships, or maintain individuality and authenticity while adhering to specific social media scripts.As such, this work expands our understanding of how humans and technologies interact and constitute eachother. This dissertation also allows us to more critically understand the role that technology plays in everyday life by illuminating both positive and negative implications. By showing how social media contributes to the blurring of previously established boundaries and roles – such as buyer/seller or digital/analog etc. – it demonstrates that social media is decisively contributing to shopping becoming an integral part of the mundane and ordinary life of a mostly young, very social media-savvy consumer group. This dissertation therefore offers new insights into the understanding of novel, technology-driven consumption habits, and sheds light on a special group of consumers who have firmly integrated social media into their everyday lives. In doing so, it contributes to the broader discussion on the transformation and digitalization of retail