ABSTRACT
This chapter shares the experiences of eight queer female Instagrammers to demonstrate how sexual identity features in their networked self-representations on this platform. It views self-representations on Instagram—photos, videos, and the interactions surrounding them—as the building blocks for networked stories of the self that individuals shape and curate through platform affordances. While queer women's alternative media, such as zines and feminist music, have included a range of gender representations and targeted queer audiences, several decades of broadcast media have portrayed narrow representations of queer women in relation to men's sexual desires. In the broad media landscape, queer women's microcelebrity strategies bring visibility to a range of identities that are generally absent from broadcast media. Together, with thousands of other LGBTQ Instagram users, their individual stories told through visual content and networked through platform technology provide a collective depiction of queer community and solidarity.
