"Just a vibe, not a life": Impression management, self-expression, and the negotiation of privacy on Instagram's layered accounts

Instagram is no longer just a space for sharing experiences, but also an arena for users to build, maintain, and negotiate digital identities amidst a culture of visibility and personal branding practices. This condition encourages users to create multi-layered communication spaces through real Instagram accounts (Rinsta), fake Instagram accounts (Finsta), and the Close Friends feature as strategies to manage audiences, showcase self-performance, and maintain privacy boundaries. This study aims to analyze how Instagram users engage in impression management, self-expression, and privacy negotiation through the use of multi-layered accounts. The study used a qualitative approach with a case study method of Instagram users who actively use Rinsta and Finsta. Informants were selected using purposive sampling, while data were collected through in-depth interviews. The research analysis utilized the perspectives of Goffman's dramaturgy, Communication Privacy Management, and the concept of identity synchronization to understand how users construct self-representations in the digital space. The results show that the use of multi-layered accounts not only functions as a privacy protection mechanism but also serves as a strategy for audience segmentation, identity synchronization, and impression management, allowing users to present different versions of themselves according to the context of interaction. This research extends the study of digital identity by showing that the negotiation of privacy on Instagram is no longer realized solely through the management of account visibility, but through the construction of multiple layers of identity that balance the needs for visibility, self-expression, and private space in the contemporary social media ecosystem.