John Christopher Baclayon Mesana
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.