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73Copyright © 2022 by Cherkas Global University
* * * Published in the USA
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International Journal of Media and Information Literacy * Issued since 2005 E-ISSN 2500-106X 2022. 7(2): 345-354
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International Journal of Mnlli und Information Literacy
DOI: 10.13187/ijmil.2022.2.345 https://ijmil.cherkasgu.press
The Beauty Commodification on Instagram Community Account of University Student in Indonesia
Nina Farlina a , *, Yulya Era Pratiwi a, Qotrunnada Salsabila a, Siti Uswatun Khasanah
a
a
Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Indonesia
Abstract
This study is concerned with the commodification of beauty that occurs on the @uiicantikganteng Instagram account. This study aims to explore the cultural practice on @uiicantikganteng that is interrelated in the Circuit of Culture so that it can form commodification. By using the method of virtual ethnography, the data analysis is obtained by observing critically of the content on @uiicantikganteng which contains the commodification. This study is conducted by employing the cultural studies approach through Circuit of Culture by Stuart Hall and Commodification by Vincent Mosco. By emphasizing the several concepts of the circuit of culture which are production, representation, and consumption, the content on @uiicantikganteng can form commodification of beauty. The results of this study shows that the photos uploaded on the @uiicantikganteng Instagram account are seen as cultural practices that show aspects of production. Public who respond to the photo through follow, comment, like, and share show the consumption aspect. The uploaded photos represent the beauty stereotype that has long been believed by Indonesia's society. Those three interrelated elements contain commodification of beauty on Instagram account @uiicantikganteng which can gain profit from the content by conducting paid promotion and selling UII brand jackets. The forms of commodification that is found are audience commodity and content commodification.
Keywords: Beauty stereotype, circuit, culture, commodification, Instagram, Indonesian university student, media.
1. Introduction
In the current period of digitalization, people can hardly escape from what is called social media in which the users come from various walks of life. Through social media people can communicate with each other, and share stories. Besides functioning as a communication tool, social media is also considered an effective means of delivering information (Shimp, 2003). Given the large number of social media users today, almost everyone uses social media both in terms of friendship and business (Evans, Bratton, 2012).
Social media can be said to become part of the lifestyle of Indonesian people in which one of the popular social media platforms is Instagram. Instagram is a platform to share photos and videos in which attract the media social users to use Instagram. Based on Monthly Active Users (MAUs) in 2019, Instagram has 2.23 billion users monthly active (Pramanti, 2020). This popularity is due to the unique features of Instagram in uploading photos and videos in which it has various filters to change the image appearance. Instagram also allows the users to add captions and hashtags and also mention the other users, then the post can be shared instantly to other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr (Drenten et al., 2020). In addition, as a visual-based platform that focuses on the
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: nina.farlina@uinjkt.ac.id (N. Farlina)
picture or the video, this encourages people to present themselves in Instagram (Lee et al., 2015). Uploading photos on social media can be used as the tool of self-presentation or it is often called as impression management. This self-presentation includes the presentation that is done either by individuals or groups in order to achieve their expected self-image (Boyer et al., 2006).
The high number of Instagram usage is also followed by the rise of Instagram accounts that repost someone's self-picture that is considered as beautiful or handsome. Berg, Kelly, and McKillop in Harris and Bardey (Harris, Bardey, 2019) stated that the aspect of self-presentation or self-picture tends to modify themselves to be more desirable. This kind of case is contained in many Instagram users that show beautiful and handsome people as the self-representation of the user. In @galericowokhits Instagram account indicates a collection of male public figures in Indonesia who are classified as handsome according to the admin criteria and people that participated in it. Another account that shows the beautiful faces can be seen from the account @maduragantengcantik that uploads Madurese who are beautiful and handsome. This phenomenon also happened within the several universities that show the student self-picture that is categorized as beautiful and handsome such as @ugmcantik, @unj.cantik, @unpad.geulis, and @mercucantik (Makarim, Dimyati, 2020). Furthermore, in this research, the researchers analyze @uiicantikganteng which represents the beauty of UII students. These accounts generally upload photos from the student's Instagram page which are considered interesting and reflect Indonesia's beauty stereotype.
The beauty stereotype is previously affected by advertising and television and now it also includes the influence of social media based on fashion, culture, politics, religion, and economy (Verrastro et al., 2020). Indonesia's beauty stereotype itself, as stated by Prianti that analyzed the advertisement of female beauty products, it is found that female beauty standard accepted by society is having fair skin, glowing face, and slim body (Prianti, 2013). Male beauty standards in Indonesia is based on physical appearance (Putranto et al., 2020). The physical appearance that is considered as the handsome standard is having fair skin, sixpack body, and tall body. These photos which are regarded as beautiful and handsome attract the society to follow the account so that the admin can get income through paid promotion. For instance, in @maduracantikganteng and @galericowokhits as stated before, they also conduct paid promotion because the account has many followers due to the society's attention to follow the account. This desire to get income as a lot of attention to those accounts indicates that capitalism also plays a role here. As stated by Zulli, in this modern-capitalism, attention is the most powerful resource (Zulli, 2018).
The high attention of the society to follow those such accounts proves that there is a high consumption to see beautiful and handsome faces on Instagram. This also means that the beauty stereotype is still strongly believed by the society. We also argue that plenty of accounts that show handsome and beautiful faces will never be created if the admins do not consider the advantages in creating the account such as to gain profit and to gain popularity of the account itself. Hence, those accounts contain issues about beauty stereotypes and commodification. In addition, the admin's way to gain the popularity of their account through increasing followers, likes, and comments is done by setting the criteria of the photo and providing interesting captions, thus it has relation with economic, culture, and social purposes.
The Instagram account @uiicantikganteng posted the first photo in August 2014. When it was first posted, the photo had already received 24 likes and 9 comments. Currently, the Instagram account has 60.6k followers with a total of 1,745 photo uploads. The uploaded photo is based on the UII's student recommendation of the other student that suggested it to be posted in @uiicantikganteng through sending a message to the admin. However, the admins do not directly accept the recommendation, the admins have to select the recommendation based on their own criteria. Thus, the admins subjectively upload photos that show the beauty and handsomeness of UII's students that are accepted by the society. Within the uploaded photo, the caption that created by the admin describes the beauty and handsomeness of UII Students' faces, so it validates beauty stereotypes in society. In this case, the more beautiful or handsome the person in the photo, the more like that the account gets. As there are many followers on the @uiicantikganteng, the researchers argued that there is a form of commodification in which beautiful and handsome students' photos are used as the main subject to generate income through paid promotion and the admins' business. Thus, the Instagram account @uiicantikganteng is chosen as the corpus analysis due to the account actively conducting paid promotion and the admins' business along with posting beauty and handsomeness of UII students.
In order to elaborate beauty stereotypes in relation to form commodification, this study is analyzed using Circuit of Culture Theory by Stuart Hall and Commodification Theory by Vincent Mosco. In the relation between circuit of culture and commodity, the things that must be considered are interrelated acts on it such as intention, interpretation, consumption and desire, consumers and producers, wanters and wanted, customer and product, management and legality, laws and lawmakers, price and competition, on the other words it can be said as the ongoing processes of commoditization (Leve, 2012).
Regarding the cultural phenomenon that contains commodification within Instagram platform, there are several previous researches that also discuss it. The first research is conducted by Horta entitled The Commodification of Body Positivity Movement on Instagram (Horta, 2016). It was published in 2016. In her research, Horta explains how the body positivity movement can form a commodification that is created by the corporation. This finally leads to the change of the body positivity movement's goals which previously to motivate people, especially women, to accept their body as what it is, into a movement to get profit for the corporation. The second research is done by Afifah entitled The Commodification of Devout Muslim Identity through Endorsement Pictures Posted on Oki Setiana Dewi's Instagram (Afifah, 2017). This was published in 2017. This research explains how the devout Muslim celebrity shows her/his identity to promote Islam as a commodity by performing devoutness through their post on Instagram. Then, the theories that are used are celebrity endorsement theory by Grant McCracken and Anti essential identity theory. The third research entitles Komodifakasi Perempuan dalam New Media: Analisis Media Siber terhadap Komodifikasi Perempuan dalam Akun Instagram @uns.cantik di Kalangan Mahasiswa UNS (Cininta, Utari, 2018). This research aims to determine the form of commodification in the Instagram account @uns.cantik by using the theory of commodification by Vincent Mosco. The result of this research is that female students do not mind if their photos are uploaded in @uns.cantik then @uns.cantik account can grow to be famous because of uploading such contents.
This research also examined commodification but it has a different discussion of each substance that showed exchange value. The previous studies do not explore the interrelated cultural phenomenon within the development and the emergence of an Instagram account, especially the account that focuses on uploading beautiful and handsome faces. The discussion analysis of Instagram account @uiicantikganteng uses circuit of culture by Stuart Hall to reveal that there is a form of commodification as proposed by Vincent Mosco. In this case, circuit of culture is a significant theory to explore and interpret the commodification form contained in @uiicantikganteng. The concept of a circuit of culture has been discussed by Stuart Hall (Hall, 1997) as a cultural process consisting of: representation, production, regulation, consumption, and identity. According to Mosco, commodification is a changing process of goods and services that previously only assessed from its use value into a commodity that is demanded by the market (Mosco, 2009).
This study then aims to explore the cultural practice on Instagram account @uiicantikganteng that interrelated in the Circuit of Culture so that it can form commodification. The research stated the research question is how beauty stereotype is seen from the Circuit of Culture to form a commodification on the Instagram account @uiicantikganteng.
2. Materials and methods
The study was analyzed with the observation on the Instagram account @uiicantikganteng using virtual ethnography method. The data was obtained by observing critically on the content of @uiicantikganteng that contains commodification of beauty stereotypes. In analyzing this study, we applied a cultural studies approach in the theory of Circuit of Culture by Stuart Hall and Commodification by Vincent Mosco. The circuit consists of the production, representation, consumption, regulation, and identity which emphasizes the understanding of cultural practices meaning and indicating the processes of meaning that are constructed within cultures (Hall, 1997). Commodification is the process of changing the use value into the exchange rate (Mosco, 2009). Since the researchers examined commodification, the concept of circuit of culture only focused on production, representation, and consumption. Commodification is the ongoing process of commodities that can be seen from the interrelated process of the circuit of culture (Leve, 2012).
3. Discussion
In order to explore cultural practice on Instagram account @uiicantikganteng, the three interrelated elements in the circuit of culture which are representation, production, and consumption are employed to show the commodification form. @uiicantikganteng is an Instagram community account operated by several admins. The account content contains photos of UII students, both male and female, which are regarded as beautiful or handsome faces as well as the paid promotion and the admins' business. Aside from uploading beautiful and handsome faces, sometimes this account uploads entertaining content such as confide and horror stories in order to attract the attention of the followers.
The discussion of the circuit of culture in this study focuses on the beauty stereotype that relates to commodification. Therefore, the sequence of circuit of culture elements that are employed in this discussion are started with production, consumption, and representation as a method to reveal the commodification of beauty stereotypes on @uiicantikganteng.
Production
The production means the process of creating the message, product, and campaign which generally focus on the practice within the society (Han, Zhang, 2009). The content that is uploaded by the admins can be seen as a cultural practice which obviously shows the production aspect. The uploaded photos are produced subjectively by the criteria of the admins. The admins create certain regulations for the students who want their photo to be uploaded and also for the students who want to recommend their friend. The regulation requires the student to send a direct message to the account by mentioning the name, major, class of year, Instagram username, and also attaching the best photo. On the other hand, the admins sometimes will also search it by themselves to find the photos which are in accordance with their criteria by sending a direct message to the students that are regarded as beautiful or handsome. In this process of production, the admins emphasize their criteria by maintaining the quality of the photos that want to be uploaded, on the other words the admins do not carelessly upload the photos as the admins should sort it out first before uploading the photos.
"If the admins do not reply to your message, please do not spamming. We are going to read all of your messages, but we also have considerations" (uiicantikganteng, 2019).
The actual criteria of the photos that will be reposted by @uiicantikganteng admins is not mentioned, however the uploaded photos clearly reflect the beauty stereotype in Indonesia, so that it can be said that the production in this account is influenced by the society's standard which successfully construct the meaning of beauty. The act of maintaining the quality of the photos that the admins upload also can be seen from their response towards their followers who ask about the term and requirement to make the photos uploaded on the account. The admins explain that if the photo is not uploaded, it means that the photo does not fulfill their criteria. Hence, the researchers argue that maintaining the quality of photos they upload is important in order to gain more followers, so that the admins are willing to do their best in managing the account.
Furthermore, according to Hall, production also includes imbuing or encoding the process which is affected by many factors, for example, certain circumstances, the availability of technology, and economical factors. In this case, the cultural practice is influenced by technology and economic factors (Hall, 1993). The availability of technology by the emergence of Instagram as the platform to share pictures encourages the society to upload the pictures which show their beautiful or handsome faces. Then, from the economical factor, the admins attempt to only upload the picture which reflects the beauty stereotype in Indonesia. By doing this, it will make people interested to follow the account which then it can be the admins' tool to get income through paid promotion and selling several products. The desire of the admins to get income is shown through the admins that usually announce that they conduct paid promotion that is shared through their Instagram Story. The language they use explicitly indicate that there is a desire to get income by stating that there will be increase in the price of paid promotion so that the admins ask their followers to be hurry to order their paid promotion service:
"For your information, for those who want to do paid-promote, you can contact the number which is placed on our Instagram bio. There will be an increase of the paid promotion price for the next month and also there will be new rules" (@uiicantikganteng, 2018).
The promotion that they conduct also can be said as economically successful because the account often uploads the paid promotion pictures, both in the Instagram feed and also Instagram story. The profit-oriented tendency of this account also can be seen from the testimony given by
their customers in which those are saved on the Instagram Highlight. The admins provide a positive testimony in order to gain more customers. Other than that, the admins also sell their own products in a form of jacket and clothes which then proves that @uiicantikganteng has an economic motive behind uploading the beautiful and handsome faces of UII students. Hence, by presenting the photos of the student that reflect the beauty stereotype in Indonesia, the emergence of this such Instagram account will re-emphasize the belief of the beauty stereotype itself which has been constructed for so long in Indonesia.
Consumption
According to Curtin and Gaither as quoted by Mohd, consumption means the product that is produced whether it will be accepted or rejected by the consumers and this is based on the consumers' belief, perception, and values (Thaker, 2018). In this research, the photos of beautiful and handsome faces of the UII students as the product is highly accepted by the society. Then, the consumer here refers to the followers of @uiicantikganteng account that they are also involved towards the development of the account. The involvement of the followers can be seen from their action in giving recommendations of photos, giving like on the post, leaving the comments, and also sharing the pictures.
The account @uiicantikganteng through their posts provide content that is highly demanded by UII's students. The high total followers that has reached 60,700 followers indicated their enthusiasm to follow this account. On the other hand, the paid promotion of @uiicantikganteng is impossible to be conducted if they only have a few followers because followers are an important thing to be considered when an account has a desire to conduct paid promotion. The measurement of the Instagram account to do promotion is the total number of followers. The more followers we have means the more profit we get (Noah, nd).
These followers are also highly active by leaving their comments to compliment the beauty of the person in the picture uploaded. Other than that, the viewers tend to give many likes to the picture which represents most of the beauty standards today. The more beautiful the person in the picture is, the more likes that will be given in which the average likes is between 1500-5000 likes. Here, the followers strengthen beauty stereotypes to this society through this account. This finally leads people to be as beautiful as the beauty stereotype, so that their photos can be reposted in @uiicantikganteng.
Furthermore, according to Leve, when the consumers consume the cultural object, it can empower, demean, disenfranchise, liberate, essentialize, and stereotype (Leve, 2012). In this research, the consumption towards the photos presented by the admin of @uiicantikganteng can empower and stereotype the beauty concept simultaneously. The meaning of beauty is generally different from one to another country and in this case the admins of @uiicantikganteng are indirectly trying to create a beauty stereotype in which the stereotype itself is based on the beauty standard in Indonesia. Therefore, besides of stereotyping the meaning of beauty, the account also empowering the belief in beauty stereotypes.
In addition, the followers of the account @uiicantikganteng tend to give a bad comment on the photos which are regarded to not fulfill the standard of beauty. This means that the beauty stereotype has so much empowered on the belief of beauty stereotypes. However, it cannot be denied that the total number of positive comments are more than the negative comments. This can be seen from their response on the comments, such as: "Wow, you are so beautiful"; "a handsome man from the Law major; "finally my sister's picture is uploaded on this account"; "you are so charming"; Hello, admin, why my friend's picture is not uploaded? can you please check her account? (@mentioning the username) (@uiicantikganteng, 2021). There are still a lot of comments that is uttered to compliment the picture that is uploaded and also the comment to ask the admin in order to recommend the photos to be uploaded on the next time and it can be seen from the comments above that there is a tendency to feel proud if their photos or their friend's photos are uploaded on @uiicantikganteng account.
Moreover, if we look deeply at the comment in the @uiicantikganteng account, we can see that the female students' photos tend to get flirting from the man. On the contrary, the male students' pictures rarely get flirted. According to Denzin, consumption can present a set as gender, ideology, power, and social class are circulating and also shaping to one and another (Denzin, 2001). In this study, the ideology and gender are shaping and circulating to each other in terms of patriarchal ideology that see women as the object so that is why the female student's picture tends to have so many flirting from the opposite gender in order to compliment her beauty. In line with
this statement, according to Haryanto and Suwito, the traditional notion about gender sees women positioned merely as an object to be enjoyed by the male's gaze (Haryanto, Suwito, 2020).
Representation
Hall states that Representation is the process when language and other symbolic systems can be used to represent a potential meaning. Generally, representation is in a form of text which is created by the participant of the culture and it can serve to share the cultural space. Furthermore, according to Rosida, representation can be seen from system, thought, and language (Rosida, 2021). Here, we can see how the admin serves a caption on the photos they upload to describe how beautiful or handsome photos of the student are. As for example we can see below:
1. "Your smile looks like pepperoni on pizza that makes people to be addicted"
2. "Oh, this is the reason why people can get diabetes"
3. "Do you guys agree that all of the law students in UII are good looking?" (@uiicantikganteng, 2021)
From that quotation, in the example (1) and (2), the admins explicitly admit that the person in the photo is regarded to have a beautiful or handsome face. Then, in the example (3), the admins clearly stated that the person in the picture has a beautiful face. The caption served by the admins as if they want to validate that the person in the picture is as beautiful or handsome as they said. Here, even though, the admins do not state clearly on their Instagram regarding the criteria fulfillment to be uploaded on @uiicantikganteng, but the picture that the admins upload clearly reflect how beauty standard in Indonesia. This is because the admins generally upload the picture of female students who have fair, light, and glowing skin, pointed nose, and also has a slim body. Other than that for the male students, generally the admins upload the picture of the students who have an ideal body which includes a tall body, both light skin and tanned skin.
The emergence of this account within the UII students absolutely marginalizes the other students who do not reach those standards. Furthermore, for the female students themselves, it is shown that there is the construction of beauty that is done by the admins in categorizing the female students' beauty. The beauty construction is regarding the construction towards the beauty of Indonesian women. According to Evita, Indonesia is known as a nation with the diversity of tribes and culture which makes the beauty of Indonesian women are different from one to another area and it contains its own uniqueness (Evita, 2010). However, like what has been stated previously within Indonesian society, people believe that being beautiful means having fair skin, straight hair, and a lean body. Therefore, this beauty construction believed by the admins obviously makes the other students feel marginalized. The low self-esteem of teenagers can be caused by the consumption of the content promoted by the media (Silva et al., 2014). O'Brien then added that media can influence people because media becomes the strongest tool to present something that is presented through social media (O'Brien, 2015).
Commodification
After identifying the circuit of culture, @uiicantikganteng relates to the commodification aspect that is interrelated within circuit of culture. The account @uiicantikganteng presents content containing beautiful and handsome faces of UII's students according to the admin's criteria which is based on the beauty stereotypes. Furthermore, a lot of people are interested to follow the account, then supporting the account by giving their likes and comments so that the @uiicantikganteng becomes a popular account within UII students and Yogyakarta regency where the UII campus is located. Due to the popularity of this account, it attracts people to promote their business by participating in paid promotion through @uiicantikganteng. As previously explained, commodification is the process of changing the value of goods or services from use value into exchange value which is profitable. According to Mosco (Mosco, 2009), commodification is divided into three types, namely content commodification, audience commodity, and labor commodification. Thus, this case is categorized as the content commodification and the audience commodity.
Audience Commodity
From the economic aspect, the mass media is a business institution that was formed with the aim of obtaining material benefits for its founders (Sunarto, 2009). Nowadays, digital media, especially social media, have a global impact in business growth and it has become a necessary part of promoting the business product. The function of social media is largely easy to communicate with more than hundred people to inform them about the company product which the particular product has beneficial to them (Pourkhani et al., 2019). Furthermore, the impact that the company had due to running the business through social media is significantly increased. The such case is
led, according to Fournier and Avery, by the exploration of social media that branding the cultural landscape and focusing on marketing to consumers which in People's Web (Fournier, Avery, 2011). Other than that, in this digital era, the increase of the business is caused by the high number of social media users because according to Clarfloaty in Chianasta social media has the most influence towards people in human lifestyle (Chianasta, Wijaya, 2014). Therefore, many entrepreneurs whether the company or start-up business are interested in promoting their business products through social media.
In order to promote the commodity in social media there are several ways to conduct the promotion. Particularly in Indonesia, the promotion methods which are mostly found are using influencer or public figure marketing concepts and paid promotion in certain user accounts which have reached a high total number of followers. This discussion is focusing on social media on Instagram which is in the user account @uiicantikganteng is conducting paid promotion. Paid promotion is a service to promote a business whether for good products or service products on social media. Generally, paid promotion is conducted by the social media account which has many followers and engages in frequent interactions with their followers. The high number of followers and its interaction is the requirement to attract entrepreneurs to use the paid promotion service to promote their product. This can be said that the number of followers in @uiicantikganteng is important to conduct the paid promotion. It led to the term audience commodity reflected in @uiicantikganteng which means the audience in @uiicantikganteng categorized as followers.
The followers of the Instagram account @uiicantikganteng until now in December 2021 have reached 60.700 followers. Based on the researchers' observation, during October until December, the number of followers had increased around 2000 followers in which previously it only had 60.500 followers. It means that this account successfully attracts many people to follow and interact through the features that are provided by Instagram which contains the content that attracts the attention of followers to be active. The content is related to the name of the account and the purpose of this account is beauty and handsome faces of UII students that are posted by turn with paid promotion service.
As stated before, the requirement of conducting paid promotion which successfully attracts many entrepreneurs to promote their product is obtained in the account @uiicantikganteng which had conducted a successful paid promotion. Thus, the researchers argue that this account @uiicantikganteng utilizes the amount of followers to gain income through conducting paid promotion and success by attracting many entrepreneurs using the paid promotion service to promote their products. In addition, not only entrepreneurs' paid promotion but also the admins promote their own business as well, that is UII jacket. It led to the term audience commodity reflected in @uiicantikganteng which means the audience in @uiicantikganteng categorized as followers. As it stated from Dallas Smythe in Mosco the audience commodity makes the audiences as commodity products which deliver them to advertisers (Mosco, 2009). The use of new media by the audience is possible because of the position of the audience no longer as part of the mass that can be controlled (McQuail, 2011)
Content Commodification
Commodification has become part of today's social life. Almost all aspects of culture from objects to traditions can be turned into traded commodities (Proschel, 2012). The first commodity of the mass media is media content. The @uiicantikganteng Instagram account presents student photos that have an appeal to their followers as the main content. Indirectly, this account seems to send thousands of followers to freely express various content that they find interesting. The interesting thing here is that it is visually pleasing to the eye as the beautiful and handsome faces of UII students. The comment column and likes feature that is provided in Instagram features seems to be a tool to trigger the followers in giving reactions to the content of the Instagram account which actually aimed to gain the interactions of followers. As stated before, the importance of followers can encourage the admins to gain income by conducting paid promotion. Vincent Mosco stated the concept of commodification as the use of media content seen from its usefulness as a marketable commodity (Mosco, 2009). In this case, commodification is defined more broadly as a process transformation of goods and services from their use value to commodities that are oriented towards their exchange rates in the market, because exchange rates relate to markets and consumers, then the commodification process is basically changing goods or services to suit the wishes and needs of consumers.
Based on one of the elements of the circuit of culture which is production the UII students' beauty is produced by the criteria of the admin so that the Instagram account is well organized which only posts the beauty faces that are accepted by the society. This statement leads to the term ideology of beauty stereotypes. Beauty stereotype here is also reflected in the comments of the interaction of the followers that commented in the uploaded photo which shows the consumption in circuit of culture. From the representation in circuit of culture the uploaded photo is representing the beauty stereotype that is attached in the @uiicantikganteng. The content of commodification depicted in the account @uiicantikganteng is not only uploaded photos regarding the beauty and handsome faces but also is in the other content in Instagram story feature which can gain the interaction of the followers.
Here, the content of @uiicantikganteng, which contains the beautiful and handsome faces, encounters the transformation of use value into a commodity which has exchange value. The use value of content containing beauty faces of UII students is to inform the beautiful and handsome faces of UII students to the followers. That value of beautiful and handsome faces is transmitted into a commodity or exchange value which is a tool to gain profit through conducting paid promotion and the admins' business. The paid promotion and the admins' business is posted by turn with the beautiful and handsome photos of UII's students which means the content is as a tool for gain profit. Thus, it can be argued that there is content commodification in which the UII's students uploaded photos on the @uiicantikganteng. In here, the admins actually exchange the UII students' beauty to get income so that it is formed as commodification. The content of commodification depicted in the account @uiicantikganteng is not only uploaded photos regarding the beauty and handsome faces but also is in the other content in Instagram story feature which can gain the interaction of the followers to conduct paid promotion.
4. Results
Based n the interrelated elements in the circuit of culture, it shows how the uploaded photo of university students on @uiicantikganteng can be produced, consumed, and represented. This finally leads to the meaning construction of beauty as it is showed on @uiicantikganting account. The uploaded photos of university students are produced by the admins with a tight regulation of beauty standards that clearly reflect the stereotyping of beauty in Indonesia's society right now. Next, the uploaded photos are consumed by the followers based on the strong belief in the ideology of beauty standard itself and it then empower the other students to reach this standard. Further, the representation in this case is representing Indonesian university students who have beautiful and handsome faces. Besides that, seen from the element of production and consumption, the commodification appears in two forms which are audience commodity and content commodification. The audience commodity occurs when followers of @uiicantikganteng as the audience is utilized by the admins to get income through paid promotion and sell their own product. Then, the content commodification occurs as the admins emphasize the account on uploading photos of the beautiful and handsome faces of the students to get the audience's attention so it can be profitable for the admins.
5.Conclusion
Providing virtual-based, Instagram gives cultural practices. Especially in @uiicantikganteng account, the uploaded photos or the content contain interrelated elements of the circuit of culture. The elements of the circuit of culture led to the content of the account having beauty stereotypes and commodification substance, due to the contents showing the beauty and handsome faces of UII students that are posted by turn with paid promotion service. The commodification which means changing process values of things from use values into a commodity occurred on the Instagram account which the admins conduct paid promotion and selling their own business, UII jacket brand. This kind of Instagram account emphasizes the beauty commodification which is marked at the aim of the account, the response from followers which indicate beauty stereotypes, and the content itself.
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