ABSTRACT
Instagram is an image-centric social media application that allows members to share their smartphone photos with the world. Posts typically combine photographs with a short verbal text, and as such provide fertile ground for multisemiotic analysis. This chapter explores relations between the verbal components in Instagram posts (captions and other metadata), the images they describe, and the creator of the post. Goffman’s (1981) notions of footing and production format are put to use in examining the conflation or separation of speaker roles (as animator, author, and principal) and the effects this has on the production and reception of an Instagram post. A small, specialized set of 92 Instagram posts made in relation to the 2016 Australian federal election, and using the discourse tagging hashtag #dogsatpollingstations, is used as a case study to demonstrate how Instagrammers do or do not align with their audiences.
