Subject choice
Subject choice (in the photographic sense of the term),
whether it is an animal, a person, an exhibition, or part of
an exhibit is an important consideration when communicating
the museum experience. When examining all the
instagrams from the museum, there are a few subjects that
are more common than others. These are primarily a blue
whale and an elephant in the mammal gallery (Figure 1). In
dataset one as many as 25% of all the instagrams have the
elephant or the whale as subjects, while in the second dataset,
created by our informants, the proportion is 12%.
These animals are highly recognizable as being located in
this particular museum, making them representative of, or
emblematic symbols of the museum and even of the city of
Gothenburg. The whale has a certain standing in Gothenburg.
The emblematic character of this particular motif is
evident in comments on the instagrams such as, “Are you in
Gothenburg” or in captions like “Whale-worth the money in
Gothenburg”. Additionally, this emblematic character is
also evident in the ways in which instagrammers often use
these animals when choosing a subject for their first instagram
from the museum (see below).