Visibility and Vulnerability on Instagram: Negotiating Safety in Women’s Online-Offline Fitness Spaces

Abstract

This article investigates how safety is experienced, navigated and cultivated by women on Instagram. Using qualitative interview data, we explore women’s understanding and practices of keeping themselves and others safe when sharing information-rich images about their exercising bodies and fitness activities. Drawing on literatures from feminist leisure, sport and media studies, this article advances discussions about exercising women’s negotiations of risk and safety by considering digitally-mediated fitness experiences and the uses of “visibility and vulnerability” for creating cultures and communities of physical and emotional safety online and offline. Findings identify that knowledge of Instagram’s platform affordances and audiences, along with personal ethics, contribute to exercising women’s decision-making when posting self-produced physical activity content. We extend current thinking about the operations of visibility and vulnerability for women online by identifying the significance of spatial and relational elements to generating women’s feelings of safety on Instagram.