Extremidades em rede: a conexão e a formação de comunidades em ambiente digital

Abstract

This research aims to know the languages of the social network platform Instagram that, we believe, can distinguish it from other communication media. The investigation is anchored in the hypotheses that the platform's features can contribute to Instagram's creates it’s own language; and that it’s own users also collaborate in the language formation process, based on their appropriations and uses of the platform. The investigation is based on the hypothesis that the platform's features can contribute to the formation of Instagram's own language; and that its own users also collaborate in the language formation process, based on their appropriations and uses of the platform. We started our theoretical path with the understanding of the media context in which the research is inserted, anchored in an ecological approach to the media in which human and non-human elements inhabit this environment and, thus, collaborate with each other. In a second moment, we delve deeper into the investigation of Instagram, considering its own socio-technical structure as a possible stimulus to the process of language formation; and we assess how remediation and radical mediation may be related, too, to such process. In sequence, we turn our gaze to the Instagram user himself, seeking to identify the languages mobilized by them. We took as object the profile @bonitadepele, described as a vehicle of beauty and selftitled a virtual community. In order to know the communicational dynamics of the profile and understand how Bonita de Pele appropriates Instagram, we make a case study and resort to the approach of the extremities (abordagem das extremidades), which suggests a reading bias that allows us to take a critical look at the profile and, consequently, from the platform itself. Thus, we seek to identify the movements of deconstruction, contamination and sharing that, we believe, may be related to the formative processes of languages on Instagram. At the end of our investigation, we concluded that the hypotheses can’t be standed. Instagram can be understood as a radically mediated medium, which radically remediates and mediates the properties of its competitors. And users, in turn, make use of these features to produce their content, which is also based on the features and possibilities that the platform offers. Thus, there is no singular language, specific to Instagram There is, therefore, no specific language, specific to Instagram. On the other hand, we did identify singularities in the platform: its radically remedied languages, which enable the formation of virtual communities. These communities can also be understood as emerging elements of Instagram, where there is a stimulus for connection through the production of content and exchange of messages using such radically remedied languages. Finally, we conclude: the specific emerging element of Instagram is not the languages, but the resignification and reconfiguration of languages in virtual communities, which leads to connection.