According to sociologist Anthony Giddens (1999) the late modernity has brought about changes concerning the identity constructing processes of individuals. Bengtsson and Östberg (2011) emphasize that consumption and brands has increased in importance due to the less static character of social class, occupation and education choices. Based on these theoretical assumptions, this thesis examines self presentation on social media, for the purpose of analyzing if brands are being used as resources in the indentity creation. The study investigates the communication associated with the hashtag #oatly1 on Instagram. We approach the matter by conducting a netnographic study followed by qualitative interwievs in order to gain a deeper understanding of the subject. The theoretical outsets of this thesis are based on Giddens (1999), Bengtsson & Östberg (2011) and Belk (1988) in order to explain the role of brands in the identity creating processes. The examination of Instagram is based on Hogan (2010) to gain understanding of the social interaction online. The study displays that individuals mainly use the hashtag #oatly in purpose of spreading their lifestyle and gain publicity to the own identity. It also shows that the brand is used as an extension of the self. Furthermore the results demonstrate that there are collective aspects of hashtaging the brand, which differ from previous research. Conclusions to be drawn are that theories concerning the identity creating in the late modernity and brands as resources in these processes have validity in an online context.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-144177 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Viklund, Ebba, Sällberg, Sara |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, JMK, Stockholms universitet, JMK |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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