Performing Perfection: A Dramaturgical and Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Gen Z’s Idealized Self-Presentation on Instagram and TikTok
Keywords:
Generation Z, digital identity, self-presentation, dramaturgy, multimodal discourse analysisAbstract
This study investigates how Generation Z constructs idealized digital identities on Instagram and TikTok by integrating dramaturgical analysis with multimodal discourse analysis. Using a qualitative exploratory design, forty publicly accessible posts were purposively selected and examined to identify the multimodal resources visual, textual, and audiovisual employed in self-presentation practices. The findings indicate that Instagram functions as a visually curated frontstage, where users craft aspirational identities through coherent aesthetic patterns, stylized compositions, and global–local aesthetic expressions such as clean girl, old money, and locally adapted categories like cewek bumi, cewek kue, and cewek mamba. TikTok, by contrast, serves as a platform for fluid, expressive, and dynamic identity performances shaped by rhythmic editing, gesture, facial expressivity, and engagement with viral audio trends, resulting in a structured form of spontaneity.
The cross-platform analysis reveals that Generation Z strategically differentiates their self-presentations: Instagram facilitates stable and idealized identity constructions, while TikTok enables adaptive, experimental, and performative identity display. The study extends existing theoretical frameworks by demonstrating how dramaturgical notions operate within algorithmic and multimodal environments and by proposing the concept of cross-platform dramaturgy to explain contemporary identity work. These findings highlight the interplay between platform affordances, aesthetic norms, and generational digital habitus in shaping identity production. The research offers important implications for digital communication scholarship, youth culture studies, and digital literacy initiatives, emphasizing the need to conceptualize identity as a multimodal, context-dependent, and platform-mediated performance in contemporary social media ecosystems.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Muhammad Irfan Fakhrurrozi, Roni Setia Nugraha, Volta Ahmad Jonneva
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2026-01-29
Published 2025-12-31