Normalizing Instagram

In less than seven years, Instagram has grown five-fold and in 2021 overtook Twitter globally as a source of news. Here we engage the recurrent debate regarding the normalization of digital tools through interviews with lifestyle journalists from Austria and the United States (n = 63). Through the lens of Normalization Process Theory, we seek to understand how the routine use of Instagram has become embedded among lifestyle journalists and elaborate on the nature of normalization in journalism. We argue that to engage with the normalization of a technology is also to consider the stacking of platform-specific routines. Journalists reflected that normalizing Instagram required them to apply many of the norms they developed using Twitter.

Automated summary

This article engages in the ongoing debate on the normalization of digital tools, specifically focusing on Instagram in journalism. Through interviews with lifestyle journalists from Austria and the United States, the authors explore how Instagram has become embedded in their routine practices and discuss the concept of normalization. They argue that normalizing Instagram also involves adapting norms developed on other platforms, such as Twitter.