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Part of
Media as Procedures of Communication
Edited by Martin Luginbühl and Jan Georg Schneider
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 348] 2024
► pp. 124–155

Chapter 6
Media as cookie cutters

Exploring the digital mediality of news on Instagram

| University of Innsbruck
Digital platforms are increasingly defining the way media content looks and is experienced. In this paper, I use Schneider and Luginbühl’s (2020) notion of medial shaping to analyze the presentation of news on Instagram. My aim is to show how the mediality of digital platforms leads to a convergence of digital news in terms of its linguistic structure and multimodal design. To further the specific factors within digital mediality that make such shaping processes possible, I will also examine the metaphorical concept of platforms. Using three German-language news sites as examples, my qualitative analysis explores how the characteristics of the platform lead to a homo­geneity of media communication. I approach Instagram as a designed space that I examine in terms of spatiality, temporality, and intertextuality. My analysis of digital medialty shows how the technological capabilities and design features of Instagram shapes the presentation of news on a linguistic and visual level but also how media practitioners strive to creatively utilize the given platform templates for their own communicative purposes.
Keywords: digital media, internet linguistics, multimodality, visual design, intertextuality, temporality, news content, algorithmic curation, user practices, media sameness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Platformization of digital communication
  • 3.Media sameness
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Instagram as a designed space
    • 5.2Visual shaping
    • 5.3Temporal shaping
    • 5.4Intertextual shaping
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Materials
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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