The Initiators of Our Everyday Life – Relationship between Coffee and Instagram

Abstract

In this study, I would like to understand the background of sharing coffee online and get to know why it encourages young people to post their coffee. I analyse the two popular parts of our everyday lives, coffee and Instagram, and their connection points, which are coffee posts as communication tools and their posting and content sharing itself as a form of communication. In my theoretical background, I reflect on the process of coffee becoming a consumer product, the relationships between cafés and the public, and I reflect on the features of Instagram that captivate young people and enable online social rites. Regarding the question of presence, I am looking for the answer to the peculiarities of the relationship between online and offline, the dissonance caused by the simultaneous appearance on the two stages. The aim of the paper is to compare the traditional and the online characteristics of the coffee community and to interpret it as a rite. Based on the theoretical background of digital ethnography, using participatory observation and photomontage techniques, I explore attitudes and motivations among the Generation Z young people in Târgu-Mureş in terms of this activity. These two evocative methods, further interpreting the visuals of Instagram, allow interpretation not only from an aesthetic point of view but also in terms of the analysis of their symbol system, background, and motivations. In my interpretations, the acceptance of manipulation, the attitude of reality, the social characteristics of online coffee communities, the relationships between Instagram visuality and Generation Z media consumption needs, compensation practices that use coffee posts as an excuse and provide insight into the self-reflexive process of coffee post backgrounds are explicated. In my final conclusions, I outline the system of likeability for coffee posts as a feature of competitive, community photography. I refer to the sharing of coffee online as new contexts of parasocial relations, and I also reflect on coffee posts as a self-branding opportunity that can be used as a tool for self-expression.