Digitally Platformed Artistic Visualities – Users’ negotiations of digital platforms’ algorithmic visibility and censorship in the art/smut divide

This project examines the impact of Instagram’s content moderation practices on photographic production, circulation, visibility, and authorship, with particular attention to artistic, erotic, and self-representational practices. Adopting a mixed-methods and exploratory research design, it integrates network analysis, surveys, semi-structured interviews, media diaries, and visual semiotic analysis to investigate creators’ experiences, strategies, and negotiations with platform governance. The study follows a participatory and reflexive approach, involving photographers, models, and self-photographers from diverse and intersectional backgrounds in the co-design of research instruments and advisory processes. Through systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis, the project seeks to identify structural patterns of engagement, censorship, and self-regulation, as well as to critically assess algorithmic and human moderation systems. Its findings aim to advance theoretical and empirical debates on digital visibility, artistic labour, and platform capitalism, and will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, academic conferences, and curated public exhibitions.