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#Germancinema in the Eye of Instagram: Showcasing a Method Combination

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Transnational German Cinema

Part of the book series: Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues ((GGTD))

Abstract

This chapter analyses the 381 first Instagram posts tagged with one of the ten keywords about German Cinema. The research combines digital methods for the data collection and a series of quantitative, qualitative and network analysis to identify some of the features of the discussion emerging around this topic. The question asked involves what kind of idea of German Cinema is represented on Instagram, where are these posts published from, and what kind of network of interaction can be inferred from this practice. The responses show that there is a tendency to represent the German cinema produced during the Weimarer Republik or the most recent productions highlighting the promotional capacity of Instagram as a platform. Regarding the location of the posts, the majority of them are from European based profiles; but a good number came from Latin American locations and particularly from institutional profiles with the role of promoting the German Culture, such as the Goethe Institut; and the network analysis of users and hashtags shows that there is a community of interaction that acknowledges and uses similar hashtags in their posts. This work is a first exploration and a methodological demonstration of how Instagram research can help the understanding of cultural communication, as well as research on Communicative spaces.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Media Arts and Communication, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat

  2. Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Yulia Belinskaya

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  1. Gateway Office Universität Bayreuth, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Irina Herrschner

  2. School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Kirsten Stevens

  3. University of Sydney, Glebe, NSW, Australia

    Benjamin Nickl

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Rodriguez-Amat, J.R., Belinskaya, Y. (2021). #Germancinema in the Eye of Instagram: Showcasing a Method Combination. In: Herrschner, I., Stevens, K., Nickl, B. (eds) Transnational German Cinema. Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72917-2_7

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