Academic Genre as a Instagram Post in Today's Generation

Annabel Gutierrez

WRIT 2

March 6, 2024
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Academic Genre as a Instagram Post in Today's Generation

While scrolling on your Instagram feed, there are a variety of posts that most likely relate

to your interests. You come across different lifestyle posts from celebrities or even

advertisements from brands. While scrolling through these posts, you are reading each caption

because you are interested in what is being seen from the image. You see different styles such as

emojis that relate to the image, abbreviations, and short, simple phrases that interest a person's

short attention span. Some of these posts have comments that many people read as well. With

these comments, people share their thoughts about what was posted, leaving it open for others to

also reply to comments, creating a community online where they can communicate with one

another. Instagram posts can be a way someone can share information and communicate which

can be used as a non-academic writing genre. I will be using an academic article about how

people view an ugly versus beautiful photo during COVID-19 to translate into two instagram

posts, which uses language such as slang to a specific audience which are instagram users.

The academic journal that this instagram post was based off of was called, “What ugly

and beautiful photographs reveal about COVID-19 lockdown experiences, everyday aesthetics

and photography aesthetics” by Nathalie Vissers and Johan Wageman. They introduce an

experiment where they test what different people think is an ugly versus beautiful picture during

COVID-19. This will test how different people interpret what type of picture that is, either ugly

or beautiful. The writing conventions of this piece include jargon and audience, using specific

language that many people would understand if they knew psychology and photography.

Utilizing these conventions are helpful for researchers to connect with different audiences of the

same field of interest. The audience will attract those who are interested in the psychology of
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human behavior and cognitive experiments. Therefore, it is meant for those who will find this

study useful whether it is for academic purposes or an experiment of their own.

Furthermore, an instagram post is a non-academic genre. In an instagram post, it varies

between the type of language used. When people post pictures, captions are worded simple,

clear, and straightforward so the target audience can understand. They use slang, abbreviations,

emojis, and hashtags to make it more relatable. The target audience for instagram posts are

instagram users that are reacting to a person's instagram post, most likely of posts that peak their

interest. The purpose of these posts are to show people what you might be up to or a way to

express and show whatever you want to put out in the public. For example, an instagram post

with a picture of a coach bag. The caption only says “coach bag” with heart emojis. The hashtags

include hashtags that relate to the picture that was posted such as “#angelic”, #cottagecore”,

“#fashioninspo”, “#vintageaesthetic”, just to name a few (@Lavishlysilk, January 30, 2024).

Along with the post, there are comments, mostly of people commenting on how much they love

the bag and want it for themselves. Another example of an instagram post is from the brand

named e.l.f. Cosmetics. The captions says “Our mood when it’s finally Friday! Swipe to see

looks that we e.l.f.ing loved from our community this week” (@Elfcosmetics, February 23,

2024). You can see that again, emojis were used and the language is simple and easy to

understand. In the caption, they also have hashtags relating to the post and include the “@” of

everyone in that post. This type of post is more of an advertisement type. In the comments, you

have many people commenting with emojis to express how they feel about the post. The last

example is a post by Selena Gomez, featuring her friend. In her caption, she writes, "To the

person who makes me laugh harder than anyone on this planet. My OG girl. Thas my best friend.

Love you T #main #day1” (@selenagomez, August 1, 2023). You can see that she used the word
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"Thas" instead of "thats" which is considered the use of slang. Another thing that can be seen is

the use of hashtags that relate to the topic of her post. The comments section has many emojis

and supportive phrases such as "Girls empowering girls we love to see it!!” and “These types of

friendships are beautiful” (@selenagomez, August 1, 2023).

My strategy for successfully translating my academic text is to use the actual research

experiment to create an Instagram post. For my first example, I used an image of a desk area

cleanliness which was similar to the academic article. In the caption, I abbreviated “POV” which

means point of view, followed by hashtags. When translating, I made sure that the vocabulary

used was simple, relatable and attention-grabbing. Along with the post, I included a comment of

someone saying she relates and how this post is motivating her to also clean. Adding this step

shows more language used by others rather than just the creator of the post. This connects with

the academic article because by acknowledging her appreciation for the clean side. This

determines how other people view the same picture and may have different opinions on the

photo. Although there are no rules about how a person should caption their post or what other

people can comment on. Instagram is a platform for communication and expressing their

opinions but when incorporating the article into the Instagram post, I left out all the experiment

information because they weren't necessary. Instead, I focused on the main idea of analyzing how

people view what is an ugly versus beautiful picture to them.

Skills that I needed to use to perform this translation were knowing what would grab the

audience's attention and what they could relate to by using slang. By doing so, there is a higher

chance that people will leave a like and feel connected to the post, potentially leading them to

comment their opinions. According to “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” Janet Boyd talks about

writing as if you are a detective in a murder scene. She asked students to write a case and found
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that the “opening sentences note some kind of phone call that gets them to the scene of the crime,

all of them establish more specifically the location, all of them note precise times…" (Boyd,

2011, 90).1 This observation illustrates when writing for a specific genre, they include similar

information on how a detective will phrase it. This relates to my genre of translating into an

Instagram post because many people phrase their captions of Instagram posts very similarly,

mentioning something about or related to the picture posted. This applies to many writing genres

because each genre has its own specific style that distinguishes it from others. In the article

"Reflective Writing and the Revision Process," Giles provides examples from students' writing,

specifically a cover letter. It is structured differently from an essay because it begins with “Dear

Reader” and ends with “thanks, (signature)” (Giles, 2010, 195).2 Along with this letter, Giles had

her students write what their essay was going to be about, why they chose the topic, and include

comments from peers. This serves as a writing guide to ensure that the letter information matches

with the essay information. Although writing an essay and cover do not relate to an Instagram

post, it does have a similar process. An Instagram post consists of an image (similar to a "cover

letter") and a caption (similar to an "essay"). The creator analyzes the image and thinks of a

caption to write, making sure the caption will match the context of the image.

In conclusion, using the academic article to translate into an instagram post uncovers how

people communicate within different platforms. The academic article genre uses very formal

language whereas an instagram post uses more slang. Instagram focuses more on relatability and

simplicity that gets a point or thought across. Unlike the instagram post, the article dives deeper

1
Janet Boyd, “Murder! Rhetorically Speaking)”, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, no.2,
(2011), 90.
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Sandra L. Giles, “Reflecting writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?”,
Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, no.1, (2010), 195.
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into the meaning of specific information and conducts experiments that are used for educational

purposes.
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Bibliography

Vissers, Nathalie, and Johan Wagemans. “What Ugly and Beautiful Photographs Reveal about

Covid‐19 Lockdown Experiences, Everyday Aesthetics and Photography Aesthetics.”

British Journal of Psychology 114, no. 2 (December 26, 2022): 352–75.

https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12624.

Boyd, Janet. “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking).” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing 2 (2011):

87–101.

Giles, Sandra L. “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking? .”

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing 1 (2010): 191–204.