IGCStudy

IGCStudy is a media psychology project to understand how people use Instagram. Exactly what day-to-day behavior is like among many variables. With this app we logged the the frequency and the amount of time spent on Instagram. When uploading a new post, we checked the amount of time spent editing that new content and what hashtags are used. We will also monitor your likes and comments. Nothing about the Instagram app changed except for an initial login question that asks for your name. This is just to keep different people’s activity separate. We were only aware of your activity and the consented data was only used for educational purposes.

The project achieved these technical goals by injecting our “recording” code into the Instagram app and swizzling the interested method implementations to point to our code. Swizzling an approach of redirecting the pointer of a method implementation, usually to the person’s own instructions.