Fashioning Identity: A Technocultural Analysis of Igbo Women Designers’ Self-Presentation on Instagram

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2025-03-29 DOI:10.1177/20563051251330667

Joy C. Enyinnaya

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Using African Technocultural Feminist Theory (ATFT), this study explored how Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers use Instagram to perform digital identities. While there is extensive literature on self-presentation on social media, there is limited research on African women’s self-presentation from a feminist perspective. The Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) of Instagram posts and interview data revealed that Instagram’s photo affordances allowed designers to showcase their intricate designs and facilitate the cultural digitization of Igbo-centric fashion. The result of the three-phased analysis revealed Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers employed visual aesthetics and authenticity in their entrepreneurial online presentation. The study also highlighted the reemergence of Nsibidi , a long-lost ideography within Igbo culture, facilitated by Instagram. In addition, the study revealed that Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers use Instagram to challenge societal norms related to femininity and womanhood. This study addresses the need to examine African women’s digital identities through a feminist lens, considering the impact of overlapping power structures on their self-representational choices on social media.

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时尚认同：伊博女设计师在Instagram上的自我呈现的技术文化分析

本研究运用非洲技术文化女性主义理论（ATFT），探讨了尼日利亚伊格博族女时装设计师如何使用 Instagram 展示数字身份。虽然有大量文献涉及社交媒体上的自我展示，但从女性主义角度对非洲女性自我展示的研究却很有限。对 Instagram 帖子和访谈数据进行的批判性技术文化话语分析（CTDA）显示，Instagram 的照片功能允许设计师展示其复杂的设计，并促进了以伊格博为中心的时尚文化数字化。三阶段分析的结果表明，尼日利亚伊格博女性时装设计师在其网上创业展示中运用了视觉美学和真实性。研究还强调了在 Instagram 的推动下，伊格博文化中失落已久的意识形态 "Nsibidi "的重新崛起。此外，研究还揭示了尼日利亚伊格博女性时装设计师利用 Instagram 挑战与女性气质和女性身份相关的社会规范。本研究探讨了通过女权主义视角审视非洲女性数字身份的必要性，同时考虑了重叠的权力结构对她们在社交媒体上自我展示选择的影响。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.