Algerian femininities on Instagram: a semiotic and multimodal analysis of gendered performances

This work analyzes how women construct and express their femininity on Instagram within an Algerian context marked by conservative religious norms and modernist aspirations. Grounded in gender performativity (Butler), visual semiotics (Barthes), and digital identity theory (boyd), this study examines the visual and discursive strategies employed by Algerian female users to present themselves online. Instagram is approached as a stage for social performance, in the Goffmanian sense, where cultural norms circulate. By analyzing a corpus of Instagram posts selected according to qualitative criteria, the article explores how the femininity displayed online contributes to the negotiation of gendered identities in a digital space shaped by social and technological injunctions. A qualitative and multimodal methodology is adopted to understand the communicational mechanisms that contribute to the redefinition of cultural and social norms associated with femininity in the Algerian context. The results reveal the emergence of different expressions of femininity. By combining image and text, Algerian women on Instagram construct strategic self-representations to perform four types of femininity: traditional femininity, hypermediated femininity, hybrid femininity, and engaged femininity.