Abstract
This paper examines how curatorial practices in social media challenge traditional notions of democratic participation in digital culture. Through a detailed analysis of Poland’s prominent Instagram profile Make Life Harder (MLH), with 1.5 million followers, I investigate how content curation paradoxically both enables and restricts democratic expression in memetic communication. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analysis of 793 Instagram Stories from Q1 2023, the research reveals how curatorial practices establish monothematic and monosemantic frameworks that simultaneously foster community engagement while limiting interpretive plurality. By applying Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural mediation and symbolic power, alongside Fish’s theory of interpretive communities, I demonstrate how platform-specific curatorial practices shape ideological narratives and control meaning-making processes. The findings suggest that while memes ostensibly represent democratized communication, their curation often reinforces hierarchical power structures through selective content distribution and controlled interpretation. This research contributes to ongoing discussions about democratic aesthetics in digital spaces by highlighting the tension between participatory culture and centralized content control, offering new perspectives on how curatorial practices influence collective meaning-making in contemporary social media environments.
Presenters
Bartosz LutostańskiAssistant Professor, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
MEMES, DIGITAL COMMUNICATION, SOCIAL MEDIA, CURATION, DEMOCRATIC AESTHETICS, SYMBOLIC POWER
