F&F

Introduction

From my Instagram account:jungbin5

When I was a senior in high school in 2013, I decided to travel around Europe to celebrate my college acceptance. The traveling books and blogs were my sources of information. However, my traveling habit changed after I started Instagram at college. In 2018, I planned my trip to Vietnam based on the information and inspiration that Instagram posts had provided. Then, I started to wonder whether Instagram has transformed different parts of students’ life, especially college life at Middlebury College. If a student posts about the upcoming performance and presentation that one will participate in, do the posts influence followers to decide what to do next? Also, how much do students rely on Instagram as a source of information to plan their weekend? The research aims to measure how Instagram has changed the way college students and travelers shape their own experience through the invisible cycles of online and offline experience sharing.

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People use Instagram not only to show who they are by documenting their experience but also to decide what to experience based on the posts made by others. It shows more people rely on social media to make decisions. Then, how does Instagram influence college students and travelers to shape their offline experience, and how do these two groups target friendship and followship differently? This research addresses the question by analyzing the survey data from Middlebury College students and travelers in European counties.

The results show that both college students and tourists aspire to increase social capital by formulating an online identity that shares their experience, and mirroring effect may determine how they develop offline experience. Also, both groups choose the events or locations that they want to experience by consuming posts made by others. Depending on whom they get the influence from, the target audience and methodology differ due to the mirroring effect. However, college students who target friendship formulate a more closed network of people that grows individual member’s dependency on the group when they have to choose what to do. Tourists who target followship can more freely choose what to experience by following their personal preferences. This research aspires to help readers to estimate the extent of changes that Instagram can bring to the way online interactions immensely influence our lifestyle.

Social Capital

People aim to acheive social capital which can be hearts, followers, real life reputation, etc.

Mirroring

People reproduce the experience and image based on what they consume online

Social Capital and Mirroring

The literature search starts by understanding the scholastic definition of social media. Social media create networked publics that are distinct from unmediated publics in real life. With the features of persistence, searchability, replicability, and the invisibility of their audience (Aricak, Dunbar, and Saldana 2015: 363), users of social media create their own online identity. Online identity is rooted in reality (Yuan 2018: 50), but it is also adjustable. Users of social media can mediate online representations appropriate to different situations and audiences (Papacharissi 2009: 207). There are two main groups of users in social media that this research focuses on: college students and tourists. Existing literature mainly focuses on why college students and tourists are actively involved in social media activities and how their online presence influences each other's real-life experience.

Uses and gratification theory(UGT) explains one of the most important motivation for using social media. According to UGT, media help people to satisfy their informational, social and leisure needs(Phua et al 2017:115). That is social media provides diverse forms of social capital to users. While the concept of social media is broad, this research focuses on social capital’s function that helps people to achieve individual goals through productive social activities. Social media is a tool for communication and information, and people online formulate the network of trust and tie (Phua et al 2017:116).

Depending on the type of social capital that the user aims to achieve, the contents that they produce can show differences. The source of content can be friends, followers, search, hashtag, and location tag. Contents they consume eventually influence the choices that they make in the real world, and that is where the mirroring effect theory can be helpful to understand the phenomenon. The psychologists actively use the concept of mirroring to explain the maternal-infant relationship. That is, infants learn social behaviors and emotions through imitating their mother’s facial expression and emotion (Bigelow 2018: 367). As such, users also echo other users who have the characteristics that they want to embody, which leads them to reproduce the experience. The reproduced experiences that users share on Instagram functions as the continuous flow of motivations for other users.

College Students

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The issue of forming an identity may explain the reason why college students actively use social media. Identity has five functions, according to Adams and Marshall (1996: 433). First, it provides a structure of self-understanding. Second, it provides meaning and directions through commitments, values, and goals. Third, it provides a sense of free will. Forth, it strives for consistency, coherence, and harmony between values, beliefs, and commitments. Finally, it enables the recognition of potential. College students are in the age when they are somewhat pressured and eager to build their own identity (Aricak et al. 2015: 362). Because different generations of young people who belong to different waves of historical events cannot identically form their identity (Erikson 1968: 15), the current method of forming identity is different from that of older generations. The young-aged college students born in the starting stage of the information age actively embrace the benefits of the internet, and their quick adaptation to the trend of creating an online identity is distinguishable from the older generations. College students utilize social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to engage with society and construct their own identity.

Constructing an identity is not the only reason why college students use social media. The perceived ease of use, according to the study on Instagram usage of Korean college students by Hwang and Cho (2018: 1305), is another factor that draws college students' interest. The study measures the influence of the technology acceptance model (perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness) and uses and gratifications theory (social interaction, entertainment, information, and self-expression) to discover that perceived ease of use was the primary reason why college students use Instagram. Instagram, the platform mostly favored by college students, allows those with smartphones to take photos and share them easily as long as they have internet access.

The study also notes that social interaction is another important reason why college students use social media (Hwang and Cho 2018: 1311). Students prefer different platforms depending on whom they interact with, and the comparative study between platforms conduct by Yang and Lee (2018: 7) illustrates how they communicate with the society through social media. It defines four groups of people that college students interact with through social media: on-campus peers, off-campus peers, family, and strangers. Among them, on-campus peers are the group that college students mostly interacted with, primarily through the use of Instagram. They communicate with family and off-campus peers as well, usually with Facebook. They mainly used Twitter to communicate with strangers because the platform focuses on text-based interactions with the general public.

The social media platforms commonly serve the purpose of social interactions, but studies above show that students separate target audiences into different platforms. The research by Shane-Simpson, Manago, Gaggi, and Gillespie-Lynch (2018) answers why students tend to separate target audiences into different platforms. Facebook users mainly interact with family or off-campus friends because the platform forces reciprocal connections by limiting the access to profile only to "friends." On the other hand, Instagram and Twitter users only need to "follow" to access other user's online identities, which promotes their interactions with on-campus friends or strangers (Shane-Simpson et al. 2018: 276).

Finally, college students use social media to self-express, as it allows more autonomy, control and expressive capabilities that enable connections with like-minded individuals (Ivanyi, 2017: 4; Shane-Simpson at al 2018: 277). Therefore, multiple features of social media platforms—text, image, video, and live streaming— attempt to fulfill college students' desire to self-express. The platforms specialized in visual representations—Instagram and Twitter—most efficiently support users' attempts to self-express (Shane-Simpson at al 2018: 284). They do so by condensing a significant amount of information into a single post and reaching out to the broader range of audience. Individuals have different hobbies and interests, and "what that person does" partially defines identity. If the student likes to play music in real life, verbally describing one's identity as a musician to someone else takes a long time, and the number of audiences is limited. In social media, people can share the visual narration that condenses a significant amount of information into a short content that widens the pool of audience (Yuan 2018: 44). Users can express their multifaceted interests in countless ways in social media, which attract numerous college students to create their online identity.

Travelers

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Travelers who use social media are similar to college students in a way both groups "share" their experience to identify them as a "world traveler" or "adventurer," but they target different pools of audience. Amaro, Duarte, and Henriques (2016 : 3) divides the stage of traveler's social media interactions into three stages: before, during, and after the trip. Before the trip, travelers aim to earn information from other travelers through social media, because they need to search for which destination, airline company, or hotel to choose. Travel requires time, money, and energy, which leads travelers to avoid risks. Also, they aspire to have an enjoyable travel experience. As Yuan (2018: 50) explains, contents that users create on social media contain condensed information, and that visual narrative becomes a good source of information when deciding whether or not to travel a specific location. Also, the visual interactions implement expectations to people, which makes preparing more enjoyable. During the travel, the amount of consumption of social media contents is more substantial than production. After the travel, only around 17% of travelers who use social media produce contents that share their experience (Amaro et al. 2016: 4). This tendency reveals that the majority of travelers use social media to gain information, and the influence that producers of social media contents has over preparing and shaping travel experience is remarkably enormous.

Munar and Jacobsen (2014 : 47) have conducted a study about traveler's motivations to share their experiences on social media. They state that the increased feeling of self-efficacy and desire to fulfill self-esteem are the primary reasons why travelers produce content. Travelers who share real-time experience entail increased possibility for self-directed connectivity. Also, they improve the aesthetics of their experience to achieve identity as the world traveler or adventurer (Smith 2018: 180). That is, their self-centered motivation to gain respect and recognition reflects their desire to engage with the social media community that they belong to actively. 40% of content producers say they aim to share the knowledge that can minimize risks of others, and that active participation in social media positively impacts their sense of belonging to the online community.

Boy and Uitermark raise the awareness of increasing inequality caused by travelers' desire to aestheticize their experience. Because Instagram is a platform that presents an augmented representation of users' life, it provides consumers the social pressure to do special activities (2015:17). The consumers who achieve the traveling information via producers decide the destination that can elevate the status at the Instagram community, which brings disparities between 'Instagrammable' and 'Non-Instagrammable' spots. The locations that can most effectively create the 'Instagrammable' image is limited. As a result, the polarization of attention between popular and unpopular spots increases (Boy and Uitermark 2015: 2). The cycle continues because people feel joy by making aesthetically pleasing posts that can elevate the value of their experience.

Demographic

The survey via Google Forms provides basic overviews of how college students and travelers utilize Instagram to fulfill their desire and whether or not they receive influence from other Instagram content. The survey for students could collect a total of 31 sets of validly answered data from Middlebury College students. The survey for travelers received a total of 28 validly responded to data from Instagram users currently under the status of traveling in three different countries: Poland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. The collected data present how motives and target audiences of Instagram users lead to transform the real-life experience.

Results

Results from the survey define the similarities and differences between the motive, target audience, and impacts that college students and travelers have through Instagram. Travelers and college students share the goal of identifying themselves by sharing related experiences, and both groups influence other people's decision-making process. However, the target audience of college students who use Instagram is their friends, unlike travelers, who target the general public.

The existing studies on tourists on Instagram claim that the target audience of tourists is the general public, who does not have a reciprocal relationship. That is, tourists target the group of strangers with the body more massive than the scale of private relationships. The self-conducted survey data also prove that this claim is true for tourists. However, the data collected from the survey show that college students do not target the general public; they target those who belong to their relationship.

The study by Amaro et al. states that the minority of Instagram contents producers influence the majority of consumers, and the survey results show that it is valid only for students(2016:4). 93.5% of the student participants open the Instagram app every day. 38.7% of them produce one post within the two-week period, and 35.5% produce 2~5 contents. College students consume posts every day, but the majority of them produce less than five contents every two weeks.

Travelers also actively use Instagram, as 78.6% of them said they open the app every day. However, they produce more contents than college students as 42.9% of them produce 2 to 5 contents during their travel, and 14.3% produce 6 to 10 contents. College students and travelers use Instagram for a similar amount of time, but travelers produce while students consume.

Student users’ purpose of using Instagram is to share the experience they have with their close friends and family members, not the group of strangers. According to the responses from Question 11 (What type of event did you make the contents for the past two weeks?), 74.2% of the respondents make content about socializing and 41.9% about student-organized events. The second-largest contents that they make-student-organization events-may also show their high level of interest toward the other students in the college.

The selection of the utilities also shows that the college students' target audience is limited to their friend group. 100% of the participants replied that they prefer tagging the friend on the post, which promotes interactions among the friend group. 76.2% of the respondents set their accounts private, which only allows the selected group of people to access their accounts. None of them use hashtag utility, which increases the searchability, because the target audience is not the general public. On top of that, 60% of the respondents own a separate account for "Finsta," the account that they use to interact with more intimate and closer friends.

On the other hand, travelers share the experience with the random group of users who are essentially strangers. 67.9% of travelers reported they prefer tagging friends on their posts, which is notably lower than the case of students. 89.3% of travelers said they actively use location tags, which is the function that 65% of students said they use. Also, 42% of travelers used hashtags during their travel. 46.4 % of travelers’ accounts are public, and only 14.3% said they use “Finsta.” Given the more active use of utilities and options that allow the public to view their contents than students, we may assume that travelers target the general public while students target private relationships.

Then, do they influence the college experience of other students via Instagram? For Question 15 (Have you decided to attend the event after the Instagram post you saw?), 80.6% replied 'No.' However, this may not correctly represent reality. According to the survey, Winter Carnival, Ty Dollar Sign Concert, Spring Symposium, Nocturn, and Korean Culture Show are the top five most attended events. By dividing the number of people who participated in the event to the number of people who saw the contents of the event made by others, this survey discovers that, on average, 66.5% of participants have attended the event that they saw on Instagram through others. In the case of Winter Carnival, 78.6% of participants who saw the event on Instagram ended up attending the event.

Also, college students aspire to set up an identity as college students. 67.7% of the respondents have advertised certain events on Instagram, and among them, 67.7% promoted the event that they participate. Travelers aspire to identify themselves as travelers by sharing an aesthetic image of the experience. College students may also aspire to identify themselves as college students by posting and advertising the events that they attend to or participated in.

In the case of travelers, the data clearly shows that they strongly influence one another. 50% of travelers said Instagram contents help them to decide where to travel to, and 14.4% said it might be possible that contents influence their decision-making process. Unlike students whose influence stays within each other, travelers receive inspiration from professional travel Influencers(64.7%), hashtag search (52.9%), and random post search(52.9%). These three choices are essentially contents made by people whom the user has no relationship with. Hashtag and random search display a random set of posts that are selected by the algorithm. Posts of Travel Influencers that travelers said they saw are mostly from the random search, as only 32.1% of respondents said they follow those Influencers. The stage of travelers for Instagram is mostly online, which is different from college students whose focus is rooted in activities related to the offline relationship.

Discussion

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From the literature review, this paper highlights three aspects of tourists and college students on Instagram: they share images of their experience to identify themselves, target the specific group of relationships, and influence other people's decision-making process. The data collected from 31 students and 28 tourists may help to explain two driving forces of Instagram that motivate users to cultivate friendship and followship: social capital and mirroring effect.

The survey results discover how users target friendship or followship and how this trend influences the offline experience. Notably, the questions that ask the availability of Finsta and the privacy setting of the account have provided direct information about the target audience. The survey also asks about the use of a hashtag or location tags that leads the general public to access Instagram accounts to increase the validity of the response. The result shows that college students target people who belong to their offline relationship, while tourists target the general public who has no offline connection.

Demands for different types of social capital may explain how tourists and college students have different aspirations to engage with others and often depend on them. College students who spend most of their time on campus tend to put more values on offline relationships. They use Instagram to share their college experience mainly to raise their status within the offline college community, and that leads to tighter friendship communities. Having many followers and receiving hearts are the plus, but not the main social capital that they aim to earn. It is shown through the way they manage the private account and make Finsta to communicate with people that they know. Their social dependency for decision making therefore increases.

On the other hand, tourists value online social capital, such as followers and hearts, which lowers the social dependency when they make certain decisions. To receive more of them, confining the audience to a private relationship is not an efficient move. They manage their accounts online, use hashtags, and location tag more frequently than students do. That way, the algorithm more likely to expose those contents to the general public who search for random posts or specific topics. Among the posts that they search, if certain activity or experience looks intriguing, the user can simply reproduce the experience for oneself. And that process does not require any confirmation from their offline friends, and that leads to lowering social dependency for decision making. Instagram provides an opportunity to collect social capital and depending on what type of specific social capital users demand, the method of using Instagram also changes.

The survey also has re-affirmed the influence that Instagram has over users’ decision-making process. By observing how the contents that they consume affect the production of contents and decision-making process, we can suggest that users reproduce what they consume online by the mirroring effect. First, the survey asks students they think they get influenced by Instagram, but most of them replied that they do not get any influence. However, the responses to other questions speak otherwise. They had shown higher participation in events that they saw on Instagram, which implies that Instagram's influence is difficult to conceive consciously, or that people do not wish to acknowledge the influence. Either way, the result is a clear indication that what they consume on Instagram directly or indirectly affects what they do in real life.

The survey directly asks tourists if they receive help from other Instagram posts when they have to decide where to go, and only 35.7% replied that they do not. They said they receive motivation to travel more from posts made by random others than those by friends or family. By consuming the contents that depict desirable travel locations or interesting events, tourists follow the footsteps of the producers of the image. In the end, they reproduce the experience which they will end up sharing on Instagram.

The cycle of consumption and reproduction leads to a growing gap between students and tourists in terms of social dependency. Students’ use of “Finsta” is a strong indication of this phenomenon. The student could have started simply by setting the account private. However, as they continuously interact only among private relations, they started using “Finsta” which is extra private. On the other hand, tourists often did not know what “Finsta” was. In the end, students become more dependent on others, while tourists become more independent.

Conclusion

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One of the motivations that the pre-existing studies on Instagram suggest is users' desire to achieve the social capital of earning the attractive identity—world traveler, elite college students, etc.—by augmenting the aesthetics of their experience. This research suggests that students and tourists do actively make content related to activities on campus or at travel destinations to achieve friendship or followship. The way they define what experiences are worth sharing is dependent mainly on the contents that they consume, as they mirror the behaviors of the producers. As a result, the gap between students and tourists in terms of social dependency is growing, as the continued cycle of consumption and reproduction intensifies the whole process of utilizing Instagram online identity.

This research aims to contribute to our understanding of how different categories of users using social media platforms influence offline behaviors. Studies on tourists and the influence on the tourism sphere are widely available, and they suggest diverse perspectives, either positive or negative. The studies on how college students use social media platforms like Instagram also have been providing new insights on understanding how it shapes college experience. This research, “Friendship (heart) Followship,” does not make any critical assertions about the benefits or drawbacks of the influence of Instagram over user’s experience. Instead, it allows the expansion of the discourse on social media on categories such as tourists and students. With the pre-existing knowledge of the target audience and influence of tourists and students on Instagram, this study analyses how social capital and mirroring effect work as the driving force of Instagram activities. The insights provided from the research aspire to help future studies on Instagram to forecast whether similar social mechanisms will apply to how we shape the real world through virtual ones.

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Friendship ♥ Followship