LIKES AS EXPRESSION OF NETWORK AFFECTIVENESS ON INSTAGRAM
Likes; Digital Social Networks; Instagram; Interactivity
This study demand to understand how utilizers of social networks use the interaction tool known as "like" to communicate their affections. This form of expression is used in the interfaces of social networks as a mechanism for interaction between social actors. We used samples from four focal groups belonging to Y and Z's generations, utilizers of the social network "Instagram". As a basic research method, we're crossing between ethnography, qualitative research and netnography. The general objective of this study is to understand "likes" as an expression of network affectivity on Instagram. In order to discuss these network affectivitiness, we have dialogues with authors as Muniz Sodré (2002, 2006), Richard Miskolci (2017), Lúcia Santaella (2003, 2007, 2016), Raquel Recuero (2009, 2012, 2014) and Zigmaunt Baumant. This research points that social relations, in liquid modernity, are ubiquitous, omnipresent and transcend temporality, space and culture. Just as the media converged, especially with the arrival of the smartphone, a technological apparatus, the social relations are converging symbiotically in the post-human culture. In the post-digital's era, it's no longer possible to separate real from virtual, including human relations.