Seyed Jamal Akbarzadeh Jahromi; Avin Ahmadi
Abstract
The emergence and expansion of virtual social networks, especially image-based social networks, has provided a relatively open space for representing identity and even identity building to ethnic and marginalized groups in society that have historically been deprived of it. This article seeks to identify ...
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The emergence and expansion of virtual social networks, especially image-based social networks, has provided a relatively open space for representing identity and even identity building to ethnic and marginalized groups in society that have historically been deprived of it. This article seeks to identify the types of identity species that represented by Kurdish women on the Instagram social network; It is also identify the strategies and techniques that these women use to represent their collective identities. The research method used is a qualitative Netographic in which the Sadbak model consists of three interview techniques, collaborative observation and virtual content reading. According to the findings, although users have become more involved in representing their identities, but their activity is influenced by predetermined social network architecture structures such as liking, commenting, and sharing images. The findings also showed that there are three identity types of Kurdish women in this network: “cosmopolitanism”, “Iranian-National” and “ethnical”. The elements of each of them were divided into three categories: “belonging to the desired community”, “culture”, and “politics” and each of these subsets was represented by its own strategies and techniques. Identities represented on Instagram are more diverse than mass media. Also, these identities are fluid and polymeric and occur more radically at certain times, such as social crises.
