#domovina or How to Change Homeland into a Hashtag Cover Image

#domovina, czyli hashtagowanie ojczyzny
#domovina or How to Change Homeland into a Hashtag

Author(s): Ewa Wróblewska-Trochimiuk
Subject(s): Media studies, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, ICT Information and Communications Technologies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: hashtag; domovina; homeland; Croatia; Instagram; polyptych;

Summary/Abstract: Hashtags, originally introduced in Internet Relay Chat, then popularized in Twitter, have become the most used way to tag short messages in social networks. They are also used on Instagram since this facilitates searching, classification and clustering over visual materials. The text focuses on the hashtag domovina (homeland) and shows how Croatian users of Instagram understand and visualize the idea of homeland. I distinguished main strategies of understanding of homeland: by connecting it with national symbols, confession, landscape, cuisine and – unexpectedly – selfie. I find that Instagram group using the hashtag domovina is a new type of political community. In the last part of the text I state that images containing tag domovina create the thematic collection and that they form a new type of image that I called modern polyptych.

  • Issue Year: 12/2017
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 73-86
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Polish