Affective Politics of Aesthetics: Visual Trends and Sensory Worlds on Social Media

Shuchita Joshi; Atanu Bhattacharya

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.63296

Affective Politics of Aesthetics: Visual Trends and Sensory Worlds on Social Media

Author(s)	Ms. Shuchita Joshi, Prof. Dr. Atanu Bhattacharya
Country	India
Abstract	This paper examines how social media aesthetics function as affective infrastructures that shape user participation and identity formation on digital platforms, specifically Instagram. Moving beyond conventional notions of aesthetics as visual trends, it analyses how aesthetic styles such as Minimalism, Dark Academia, Cottagecore, and Vanilla Girl operate as affective modalities producing distinct emotional atmospheres and sensory experiences. Drawing on Brian Massumi’s (2002) theorization of affect as pre-individual intensity, Sara Ahmed’s (2004) concept of affective economies, and Teresa Brennan’s (2004) model of transmission of affect, the paper demonstrates how these aesthetics circulate moods and feelings that exceed individual expression to create collective affective environments. It also proposes the concept of ‘atmospheric technologies’ to capture how social media aesthetics, through curated visuals and platform affordances, generate ambient moods that users inhabit and circulate. The analysis reveals that platforms serve as affective infrastructures, designed to amplify content based on its capacity for emotional resonance rather than its textual meaning. Users perform affective labour through curated visuals and stylistic choices to sustain coherent identities, operating within platform logics of visibility and shareability that inherently reinforce social hierarchies of race, class, and cultural privilege. The paper argues that even aesthetics appearing to resist neoliberal values, such as Cottagecore’s pastoral retreat or Dark Academia’s intellectual melancholy, are absorbed into platform economies that transform affect into marketable, shareable content, illustrating how contemporary digital culture packages emotions into standardized aesthetic modes.
Keywords	Affect Theory, Social Media Aesthetics, Digital Platforms, Instagram, Aesthetic Curation
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-12-13
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.63296

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Affective Politics of Aesthetics: Visual Trends and Sensory Worlds on Social Media

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