Navigating Instagram: Everyday resistance and the spatial dynamics of user practices
2025-11-24
Understanding power requires focusing not just on structures but also on people, especially as resistance becomes more complex. Extending De Certeau’s spatial framework of place, space, and subject positions to digital platforms, this article explores how ordinary Instagram users negotiate platform power by approaching resistance as spatial negotiation embedded in everyday use. Based on 15 in-depth interviews, the analysis identifies everyday tactics that transform Instagram from a structured place into a lived space : users abandon places, make the platform habitable, play with its materiality, and repurpose it for unexpected uses. The study demonstrates how users resist by how they position and move within platform structures. It categorizes users as voyeurs and walkers , based on De Certeau’s subject positions, and introduces a new category, transients , each reflecting distinct spatial relations to the platform. This article argues that spatial relations shape user agency and the conditions under which resistance becomes possible.