Digital methods for the study of shared photography. A distant approach to three iberoamerican cities on instagram

Abstract

In this article we address the empirical study of shared urban photography in Instagram. We study how three Iberoamerican cities, Buenos Aires, México y Madrid, are represented in the social plaftorm through a dataset of five thousands pictures labeled with the hashtags #buenosaires, #cdmx and #madrid respectively. We propose a distant approach (Moretti, 2007, 2015) based on four techniques of data analysis (Gandolmi and Haider, 2015) applied to cultural research. We inquire about the ways in which the cities are represented by the users on the platform, identifying also some social uses of hahstags. At the methodological level, we explore the possibilities of data analytics to conduct a sociocultural study. At last, we draw some conclusions about data-based research methods, the highlights of urban representations for each city in a comparative way, and the social usage of shared photography in Instagram.