Paper short abstract:

Instagram is a platform for stories. In fact, many of its users identify as 'visual storytellers'. This paper presents explorations of this platform as a site to conduct qualitative research through a study of narratives of care for old buildings in Sweden marked with the hashtag #byggnadsvård.

Paper long abstract:

Byggnadsvård means care for buildings in Swedish, or conservation of the built environment. It is a concept that has a growing presence on social media expressing a concern for the past but also for the future. Here the past and the longing to preserve traditional skills and prolong the life of old material is even thought of as environmental activism promoting better uses of resources and rejecting the dominant cultural narrative of modernity that "new is always better".

The climate impact of the building sector is severe. In Sweden it generates around one third of all waste and is responsible for about 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The house relates closely to the critical environmental issues humanity now faces and in it one can detect several 'regimes of care' materialising; care for the individual, the family, the community, society and the planet we call our home. This is apparent in the online narratives of old houses.

Instagram is presented as a visual storytelling device intended to foster and "bring out creativity in all of us". Though highly commercialised this can be a platform that gives voice to alternative understandings and other concerns, and in this case reveal the mediations and transformations of tradition and continuity, and different kinds of handling "pastness" and histories worth continuing. Along with analysing the narratives tagged #byggnadsvård the paper presents an experiment with methods and an attempt at finding ways for contextualising practices that cross boundaries of cyberspace and physical space.