Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Analysis

Reader 1

Char Miller

Reader 2

Kimberly Drake

Reader 3

Jordan Daniels

Abstract

At its inception Web 2.0, what we now know as social media, was celebrated as a tool that would change the world; It was supposed to be a space of equal opportunity where anyone could create and distribute content without monetary compensation. In some ways this vision has come to fruition. However, I explore how the entrepreneurial capitalist structures of the tech industry were built into social media, and the impact that structure has on content and culture production on Instagram. I look at how two food influencers named Lexie Smith and Pierce Abernathy are impacted by the structures of Instagram given that the values they promote seem to be in opposition to the entrepreneurial capitalist values built into the app. The main questions I ask are: 1) How has the creation of social media changed the production of culture? 2) In what ways does the structure of Instagram and social media constrain Food Influencers abilities to promote ideologies outside of the mainstream? I argue that social media has broadened what is “mainstream” through the creation of networked publics and taste regimes. However, entrepreneurial capitalist values are built into Instagram (such as self-branding) and straying too far from those values limits one’s ability to be seen. Food Influencers such as Lexie Smith and Pierce Abernathy must play a delicate game in which they attempt to balance the branding and conspicuous consumption necessary to gain and maintain influence on the platform, while sticking to their own ethics and ideas.

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