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Abstract

Street art murals (along with festivals and art districts) have proliferated in the past decade, becoming the “face” of creative cities through post-industrial urban regeneration strategies, and these efforts have been connected to gentrification in cities around the world. In this article, I consider how mobile audiences interact with street art through Instagram and propose that the “Insta-city”—a coproduction involving art, photography, location, the Instagram platform, and its users—is a site for “digital placemaking,” where new claims over neighborhood identities are made and contested. The article synthesizes the literature on mobile audiences and the city, street art as a tool for urban renewal, and Instagram as a culturally dominant visual and geo-coded social medium to create the Insta-city as an analytical lens for reimagining the active audience in the context of urban communication.

Keywords

digital placemaking placemaking street art Instagram urban communication gentrification mobile audience audience studies produsers digital city

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Street art in the Insta -city: Mobile audiences and urban placemaking

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Keywords

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References