Categorizing cultural festival Instagram images via Hunter's typology of photographic representation

Purpose Festivals increasingly use social media data to understand visitor experiences and inform management, yet research remains dominated by textual user-generated content. Photographic representation on image-centered platforms such as Instagram remains underexamined. This study addresses that gap by analyzing attendee-shared festival photographs as a source of insight for festival curation and management. Design/methodology/approach Using directed content analysis guided by Hunter's (2008) Typology of Photographic Representation, the study examined a purposively selected corpus of Instagram photographs from the Philippines' top cultural festivals (N = 1,056). Three Generation Z coders participated in a three-step coding process to classify the images’ spatial and subject content. Findings Simple Percentage Agreement, Fleiss' kappa, and ANOVA generated insights into inter-coder agreement on the space and subject content of festival photographs. The findings show that Hunter's typology can be applied reliably to attendee-generated festival Instagram images and can inform festival policy and management practice. Originality/value This study offers one of the first deductive content analyses of attendee-produced festival photographs on Instagram. By applying Hunter's (2008) framework to user-generated images, it advances photographic representation research and demonstrates the value of photographs as rigorous data sources for festival promotion and management.