Hashtags on Instagram: Self-created or Mediated by Best Practices and Tools?

Abstract

Social media enables conversations mediated through documents as texts, audio, images, or videos. Likewise, hashtags became an essential medium for social media communication. Instagram is well-known as one of the current platforms for hashtagging. This exploratory study investigates how hashtags used on Instagram became established in respect of self-creation and best practices or tools. The analysis is based on data obtained from an online survey (N = 1,006) of Instagram users. 55.7% of the respondents use hashtags on Instagram. Only self-created hashtags are assigned by 41.4%, whereas 58.6% are (sometimes) inspired by others. Best practices and tools based on friends/other users or Instagram functions are more frequently used in contrast to offers from influencers or third-parties (e.g. guides, hashtag-sets). Furthermore, the majority does not intentionally use false hashtags. This study enables a first overview of the Instagram users’ hashtagging creation behavior and selection process.