#Write A Caption: The Differences Between Males and Females In Captioning On Instagram

ABSTRAK Hernawati, Defa. 2018. #Write A Caption: The Differences between Males and Females in Captioning on Instagram. Thesis, Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang. Advisors: Prof. Dr. Yazid Basthomi, S.Pd., M.A. and Inayatul Fariha, S.S., M.A. Keywords : gender roles in social media, gender behavior, male characteristics, female characteristics, caption, Instagram. Gender roles which revolve around the conception of male and female characteristics are socially and culturally constructed. There are several aspects which affect the construction of gender. In this case, the conception of male and female characteristics and behavior is viewed from the caption on social media as it is known that social media becomes a crucial aspect to form a new perspective in today’s society. In making a caption on social media, in this case Instagram, both males and females have their own way to express and describe their feelings. This study aims to find out the differences between both genders in making caption on Instagram in terms of its length, context, language, hashtag and the relevancy between the caption and the picture. Using the method of qualitative descriptive, this study provides an explanation of male and female characteristics through a caption made by both genders. Subsequent to collecting the data, the process was followed by content analysis. The results show that both genders have their own preferences in making a caption on Instagram. Males tend to make their captions shortly. The context of their caption is around their physical activity, showing up their joke image and independent side. They do use emoticons in their captions. In addition, their captions and hashtag match with the picture that they post. Females, on the other hand, tend to make their caption, informative, longer, wordy and show up their personal issues in order to establish their existence and also seek for online social support. They put more thought and effort in making a caption. They do concern about how many likes and followers that they get from posting a picture. Thus, they use hashtag features with broad varieties of topics to make their post discoverable and go viral. In addition, they like to portray their dependent side and sentimental or emotional side on Instagram