Katrin Tiidenberg (Aarhus University, Denmark and Tallinn University, Estonia) and SMC Principal Researcher Nancy Baym (Microsoft Research, New England) have recently published an article in Social Media + Society that analyzes how pregnancy is performed on Instagram. According to Tiidenberg and Baym,

‘Pregnancy today is highly visible, intensely surveilled, marketed as a consumer identity, and feverishly stalked in its celebrity manifestations. This propagates narrow visions of what a “normal” pregnancy or “normal” pregnant woman should be like.’

Drawing on Tiidenberg’s work during her Ph.D. internship with the SMC (2014), the article asks:

‘[W]hether they [women] rely on and reproduce pre-existing discourses aimed at morally regulating pregnancy, or reject them and construct their own alternatives.’

You can read their findings here.