#visual communities

(Looker 2016)

Digital photo and video sharing applications such as Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube offer much more than a mechanism with which to capture and distribute ‘personal ephemera’ (Lange 2009, p. 74). Like the painters of the Impressionist movement it has provided a blank canvas and a new art form, characterised by an ordinariness of subject matter, the momentary nature of human perception and the transient qualities of the everyday experience. I am now equipped to express the impulsive and trivial ‘moments in life’ that juxtapose the more readily recorded ‘celebrations and rites of passage’ (Lange 2009, p. 74).

For me my contribution to Instagram and Snapchat is more than a collection of photographs or fleeting videos. They are a unique and personalised expression of experience, a ‘digital self-representation in a networked age’ (Vivienne & Burgess 2013, p. 284).  As though adorning the walls of The National Gallery, social media platforms have allowed me to reflect on and curate a broader narrative of ‘artefacts’ that illustrate and exhibit my participation in the world as I see it (Hogan 2010, pp. 381-382).

The depiction of self has been a construct of ‘visual communication’ throughout history that has defined understandings of community and culture (Ibrahim 2015, p. 42). In its personification of identity it offers profound opportunities to peer into the similar and different, the innermost and the impersonal. Consequentially the revolutions in personal and social imaging that have erupted alongside developments in mobile camera technology and digitally mediated experiences have cultivated an environment where representations of ‘everyday life’ form a central element of our ‘identity construction, communication and social connection’ (Ibrahim 2015, p. 43).

Today, the digital photograph has evolved as a dominant channel of communication between ‘socially networked individuals’, participating across social media platforms to capture, document and broadcast ‘a visual record’ of the experience of self (Iqani & Schroeder 2015, p. 409). In this sense images function akin to ‘spoken language’ as the photos and videos I share capture a ‘new currency in social interaction’, disseminating between users and traversing networked communities to construct and affirm my connectedness (Van Dijck 2008, p. 62).

Visual communities and social imaging are shaping ‘the architecture’ of a modern public sphere, through a dynamic mediation of our digitally enhanced experiences (Papacharissi 2013, p. 51). This fervent interaction with visually communicative social media is underlining a contemporary culture that is yearning for ‘self-promotion and personalised communication’ (Iqani & Schroeder 2015, p. 405). Being ‘visible’ in away that is for the most part managed and directed by myself is significant, not simply for its offer of control over my individual perspective or frame of reference, but also because it prompts greater consideration of the discourse surrounding digital ‘citizenship’ and how it might be articulated across the more visual expanses of the social media landscape (Iqani & Schroeder 2015, p. 412). The images and video I contribute to my varying social media accounts assist me in ‘narrating’ and also drawing sense from my experience, they are used to connect me and those within my digital network to the nature of my existence. ‘With snapshots we become our own historians, and through them we proclaim and affirm our existence’ (Iqani & Schroeder 2015, p. 408).

References:

Hogan, B 2010, ‘The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media: Distinguishing Performances and Exhibitions Online’, Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 377-386.

Ibrahim, Y 2015, ‘Instagramming life: banal imaging and the poetics of the everyday’, Journal of Media Practice, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 42-54.

Iqani, M & Schroeder, JE 2015, ‘#selfie: digital self-portraits as commodity form and consumption practice’, Consumption Markets and Culture, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 405-415.

Lange, P 2009, ‘Videos of Affinity on YouTube’, in P, Snickars & P, Vonderau (eds), The YouTube Reader, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, pp. 70-88.

Looker, E 2016, ‘Introspective: portrait of Rohan’ [image], 26 March, Melbourne. 

Papacharissi, Z 2013, A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age, Oxford: Wiley, ProQuest Ebook Central.

Van Dijck, J 2008, ‘Digital photography: communication, identity, memory’, Visual Communication, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 57-76.

My iPhone’s Screen Time app informs me I spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on YouTube A DAY (thanks for the shame, Apple). Granted, most of this time is spent while I’m getting ready for the day, I must admit at some point along the line tuning into to my favourite YouTube channels has replaced me watching regular TV. I know I’m not alone in this, with the platform averaging a mind boggling five billion views each and every day (Videonitch 2017).

So what drives this global fascination with YouTube’s content? It comes down to visual communities and the idea of videos of affinity, which ‘aim to transmit a feeling of sharing a particular moment, large or small, or a certain state of affairs in the creator’s life' (Lange 2009, p. 74).

Some of my favourite videos of affinity come from family vloggers The Saccone-Joly’s. Their channel trailer below demonstrates the type of extremely personal footage they share.

They’ve since welcome two more children to their family, but don’t worry, I’ve already seen their labour and delivery. In addition to the birth of their children, I’ve watched their engagement, wedding, moving into their first home, along with more mundane things like trips to the park, and what kind of porridge they made on their What I Ate Wednesdays series. Think I sound like a creep? Tell that to the two million other people subscribed to their channel (YouTube 2019)!

All jokes aside – the Saccone-Joly’s have been extremely successful at creating an affinity with their audience, from book-deals to jewellery lines, they’ve turned their hobby into a full-time career.

The Saccone-Joly’s are not alone in their YouTube success, fellow family vloggers the ACE family have a staggering fifteen million viewers subscribed to their channel (Youtube 2019). The family begin each video with the greeting “Hey ACE Family!”, giving the viewer an instant feeling of affinity and belonging within the family.

Their army of fans refer to themselves as ACE family members and interact with each other within the comments of each video. The family has truly created a visual community among themselves and their audience, letting them share in all the important moments in their lives.

As technology develops, we can only imagine where these digital communities will take us. Using VR to be present in the labour and delivery room? Hollagrams of our favourite online families in our own living rooms? Whatever it is, you can bet you’ll find me there.. getting my 2 hours and 24 minutes worth.

Personal photography begins with the introduction of the Kodak hand camera in 1888, making the practice of photography accessible to the mass market (Vivienne & Burgess, 2013). As opposed to paying a professional photographer a fortune for a still set up family photo.

Fast forward to the future, every single daily activity and family life can now be photographed digitally as a throwaway image. Taking the photo with the location or landscape in mind is far more critical knowing that you will be sharing the picture online. What’s even more concerning are the many privacy concerns around social media images, once you have uploaded the photo online the ownership of the image is no longer yours.

Social media platforms like Instagram rely on photos to operate. This sort of service has been compared to as a personal exhibition, you are curating the images being loaded to your presentation with friends and family in mind, but in fact, the exhibition is available to everyone.

Van Dijck (2008: 59) said:

“While the internet allows for quick and easy sharing of private snapshots, that same tool also renders  them vulnerable  to  unauthorized  distribution. Ironically, the  picture  taken  by  the roommate as a token of instant and ephemeral communication may have an extended life on the internet, turning up in unexpected contexts many years from now ... the increased manipulability of photographic images may suit the individual’s need for continuous self-remodelling, but that same  flexibility  may also  lessen  our  grip  on  our images’  future  repurposing  and  reframing, forcing us to acknowledge the way pictorial memory might be changed by ease of distribution.”

Visual social media is essential in our modern day understanding of ourselves and others. We live in a digital world that enables us to polish our own image to perfection, selectively posting opinions that are considered and edited, images that fit our preferred ideals and stories that meet the persona we wish to project.

Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram have become the relevant platforms to afford different forms of networked visuality engagement, create our modern digital communities and polish our digital persona.

Reference List

Van Dijck J (2008) Digital photography: Communication, identity, memory. Visual Communication7(1): 57–76.

‘The smartphone selfie as an example of a shift in society using technology as a means of self-expression. In many ways, the selfie represents the epitome of contemporary culture's transition into a highly-digitalised and technologically-advanced age as mobile-phone technology has caught up with the camera’ (McIntosh 2017).

Reference:

Being ‘visible’ in away that is for the most part managed and directed by myself is significant, not simply for its offer of control over my individual perspective or frame of reference, but also because it prompts greater consideration of the discourse surrounding digital ‘citizenship’ and how it might be articulated across the more visual expanses of the social media landscape (Iqani & Schroeder 2015, p. 412).

Reference:

The development of personal technology like cameras on smartphones and our penchant towards social media have proliferated what we know as visual communities and ‘social imaging’.

Now more than ever, we are communicating through imagery online. Lange (2009) states that personal videos posted online like ‘vlogs’ are not the same as old home movies, they are intended to communicate with others and “aim to transmit a feeling of sharing a particular moment...or a certain state of affairs in the creator’s life.” (Lange 2009, p74)

These videos are used to maintain connections within social networks, much like earlier traditional written blogs. It is simply advancement in technology, also reflective of our tendency towards the visual now it is available.

Forefront visual imaging app Snapchat allows for communication purely through photos, rather than around them on mediums such as Facebook. (Hermann 2014) If Twitter is a ‘micro blogging’ site, Snapchat is a nano. Users share what their doing through images that dissapear in seconds, making Snapchat possibly the quickest and easiest form of communication through social media.

While Snapchat images are ephemeral and commonly shared between close friends, photographs posted on mediums such as Facebook and Instagram garner a wider audience, creating new contexts of visibility and privacy. (VIvienne & Burgiss, p282)

Third party sharing of images posted on social networks is an issue of grave concern due to the lack of rights that come along with digital publishing. Many platforms own the rights to all images uploaded by their users, as is the case with Instagram. This lack of protection has lead to photos being reused in a number of different contexts, many of which strange and disturbing. I have heard of people’s baby photos being uploaded on Facebook pages claiming they have cancer and asking people to pray for them. Common third party uses of images include advertising purposes and cases of impersonation and identity theft.

Many popular internet memes today are created this way. Edited versions of a real person’s Facebook photo gain popularity in online communities through being shared and liked continuously. The subject’s of memes have had different responses, with some brushing off the joke and others left feeling hurt, embarrassed and offended. Imagine unwittingly being ridiculed by millions of strangers.

  Read: Eermahgerddon: The Untold Story of the Ermahgerd Girl here

Read: Girl with Down’s is Unwitting Subject of Mean Internet Meme here

For one unintentional meme star, the cost was her lucrative modelling career.

In order to minimise harm for children online, Dr. Deborah Gilboa urges parents to have the strictest privacy settings on social media, but acknowledges that this is often not enough. (Holohan 2016)

"This is a fact of life that if you are going to put photos on the Internet, you are going to quite possibly see them in places you wouldn't expect. If you are entirely opposed to that, you very may well have to consider not putting them online," she says.” (Holohan 2016) 

In our increasingly online world simply not posting may seem unrealistic for some, but this is an issue parents will have to continue to face in our digital world.

REFERENCES

Herrman, J 2014, Meet the man who got inside Snapchat’s head’, Buzzfeed News, viewed 22 January 2016, <http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/meet-the-unlikely-academic-behind-snapchats-new-pitch#.eleX8JRAR>

Holohan, M 2016, ‘Post family pics on social media? Here’s how to avoid having them stolen’ Today, viewed 22 January 2016, <http://www.today.com/series/wired/post-family-pics-social-media-here-s-how-avoid-having-t65196>.

Lange, P 2009, Videos of affinity on YouTube, National library of Sweden, Stockholm, pp. 70-88. 

O’Neill, J 2014, ‘The Disturbing Facebook Trend of Stolen Kids Photos’, Yahoo, viewed 22 January 2016, <https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/mom-my-son-was-digitally-kidnapped-what-112545291567.html>.

Visual Communities and Social Imaging

Digital communities have different social media platforms orientated towards specific media forms (networked visuality) and visual publics (imaging communities): video or vlogging (YouTube), art (Deviantart), photography with digital cameras (Tumblr, Pininterest), and selfies with mobile phone cameras (Snapchat).

Of particular importance were the revolution of personal and social imaging; the context underlying and the culture of photographic portrait vs selfie portraits. Personal photography with digital cameras was traditional in the experience of close networks (family) working as a tool to achieve 'social cohesion’ (representing and assembling togetherness), in the process of being there together for photos. The rise of selfie culture doesn’t necessarily mean sharing them on social media: it’s been argued of the difference between the culture of taking selfies (exploring and admiring the depth of self in an ‘image’ driven world, and the culture of sharing (or over-sharing) on social media. In this context, immediacy is taking over displaying and archiving, the visual modes of expression, sharing and communication. The number of anxieties, difficult ethical and legal issues regarding user control over our own image (reputations and photos) has also been raised, particularly in the form of tagging.