#blessed

Over the past two years, I have watched Instagram rise in popularity, surpassing both Facebook and Twitter use in my social circles. As of lately, a lot of my friends have been using Instagram to share their religious beliefs. Often they will post a picture of a sunset or of the bible and share a bit of encouragement with their followers. This recent use of Instagram has been opened my eyes to the fact that you can portray meaningful parts of your life through social media.

 In order to see the way people all around the world make different associations with Christian words, I have chosen to conduct my research on the use of “hashtags” through Instagram. I will be creating a list of words that are often used in the Christian faith and will then research the different pictures and captions people post along with these “hashtags”. For example, #blessed is often used in Instagram posts. I want to see the way different people would ascribe a word such as, but not limited to, #blessed with their life and try to understand the many different ways that people can experience Christianity in their day to day life.

I will conduct a close analysis of what words truly resonate with Christianity, select a reasonable amount of “hashtags” to study, and then select a number of posts to analyze, such as the 50 most recent posts. My study will not be limited to only the users that I am personally following on Instagram, but will expand to every single user that has their profile settings on public. I will not be able to see what private users are posting, so my research will only be on the users who wish to share their post with all of Instagram and not just their friends. I look forward to understanding the various ways that people share about their Christian faiths through the use of Instagram.