A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Selected Instagram Posts of Local UAE Social Media Influencers

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 A researcher at the faculty of mass communication, university of sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

2 Assistant professor at the faculty of mass communication, university of sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Abstract

This research studies selected Instagram posts by Young Emirati social media influencers. The aim is to analyse how visual discourse on Instagram allows the said influencers construct their identity and propagate a reality through visuals and textual data. For analysis, the researcher has chosen a sample of 25 Instagram posts by 10 influencers through multistage purposive sampling. The said posts are analysed under the approach of discourse analysis. The methods used for analysis of the data under analysis are visual content analysis proposed by Bell. P and multimodal discourse analysis as proposed by Machin and Mayr. The findings reveal that there are two major themes; the first theme is of traditional versus global under which the researcher has found that both men and women use clothing styles to construct their identity of traditional or modern. For instance, women use Hijab or shaylas to construct their traditional Arabic identity and similarly men wear traditional Arabic clothes. To construct their identity as modern both the genders wear western clothing. The second theme is promotion of self through travel, in the visual and textual discourse of social media influencers on Instagram. The findings reveal that social media influencers use international destinations to promote themselves as travellers and construct their personalities as fun beings travelling the world exploring new places.

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