ABSTRACT
Chapter 4, ‘Social media, space and place: #capetown on Instagram’, explores how city-related hashtags are used to shape conceptions of offline space through online representations. The chapter draws on the idea that Instagram has become a popular way to share visual representations of culture and everyday life, and that these images are embedded with layers of signification. It explores visual representations of Table Mountain; the relationship between Instagram, race, urban regeneration and spatial inequality; and representations of ‘gay’ Cape Town. It also considers Cape Town-based influencers, street art and graffiti, and alternative representations which deliberately resist mainstream tourist portrayals to subvert stereotypical identity constructions by sharing everyday experiences and asserting cultural authority over the online space. The central argument is that dominant visions of the city as portrayed on Instagram are depoliticised and constructed primarily for the tourist gaze. It argues that the spatialised matrix of apartheid geography clearly articulated who could enter which spaces and neighbourhoods, and that this is still reflected in the visual culture of Instagram. By exploring the visual narratives of images tagged with city-related hashtags, the chapter shows how the platform reflects the racial leisure geographies created by apartheid, echoing a colonial iconography that sees place as available for consumption.
