The Island of Sandhamn – Overtourism and Instagramism

This chapter investigates how the island of Sandhamn in the Stockholm archipelago is represented on Instagram against the backdrop of the concept of overtourism. With an increasing number of visitors, Sandhamn has been impacted by the blight of overtourism. However, browsing through Instagram posts pertaining to Sandhamn would indicate that the situation is unproblematic. Yet, recent research has shown that Instagram has become a main actor in the negative processes that accompany tourism. This study is based on posts sampled from the Sandhamn geotag. The method used is a multimodal qualitative analysis, and the result of the study suggests that the ideology called Instagramism has a homogenizing effect on the Instagram users. The posts mainly consist of aesthetically pleasing pictures bustling with human activity, and the downsides of overtourism are nowhere to be seen. This differentiates the Sandhamn posts from the rest of the archipelago region which is represented on the same platform by deceptive empty landscapes.