Visualized values in the social practices of Ukrainian Instagram users

The article is devoted to studying visualized values in the social practices of Ukrainian Instagram users. The authors analyse the specifics of post-semiological and socio-dramatic approaches to studying of the visual content of social networks. It has been suggested that photos and videos may represent 1) conscious values of social actors, which they tend to visualize due to their importance, 2) unconscious values, which are involuntarily projected onto the visualized online behaviour. The paper presents the theoretical substantiation of the need to study the values through visuality analysis. The study of visualized values in the social practices of Ukrainian Instagram users was conducted using R. Inglehart’s theory of postmodernization of values, which describes three value patterns – traditional, modernist, and postmodernist. The study aimed to find out which visualized values dominate in the Ukrainian Instagram pool; to conduct a comparative analysis of male and female value preferences in the visual field of Instagram. The results of quantitative content analysis of 2657 photos of Ukrainian Instagram users are presented. It is noted that modernist and postmodernist values are most often visualized in the social practices of Ukrainian Instagram users (38,8% and 41,8%, respectively); the most popular visualized values in female accounts are glamour, environmentalism, and aesthetic perception of life, and in male – friendship, professional self-development, career, and achievement. It is assumed that the visual field of Ukrainian Instagram presents the social actors’ value preferences which can be both conscious and unconscious. It is emphasized that they can anticipate value changes in real life and latently influence the formation of new value patterns. The conclusion is that the visualized values in the social practices of Instagram users can act as predictors of further value transformations in real social life.