Desi Dwi Prianti, Adrian Athique
This article examines how Indonesian youth strategically navigate Instagram to shape their digital identities through practices deeply entangled with postcolonial esthetics and global consumerism. Based on visual analysis of Instagram account, participant observation, and in-depth interviews, the study highlights how users create and manage dual accounts—a main account curated to meet social expectations and an alternate account used to explore more personal, often transgressive, expressions of self. Drawing on Appadurai’s concept of imagination, Goffman’s dramaturgical theory, and Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality, the findings show that Instagram has become more than just a social media platform—it functions as a cultural space where identity is performed, negotiated, and made visible. The analysis identifies three intersecting layers of this process: the desire for representations of a “better life” shaped by colonial residue; the scripting of preferred identities through selective audience curation; and the production of visual norms that privilege Western standards of beauty and modernity. While alternate accounts offer a space to momentarily resist societal expectations, they still operate within the visual and algorithmic structures shaped by colonial hierarchies. The study contributes to postcolonial media studies by showing how digital platforms are both spaces of self-expression and sites of inherited cultural tension. © 2025 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, Indonesia; University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
