Report – Assessment Task 3
Bethany Hayes – s3657462
I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services
Week 9 – Instagram Photo
Week 9 – Instagram Video
Week 10 – Instagram Photo
Week 10 – Instagram Video
Week 11 – Instagram Photo
Week 11 – Instagram Video
Instagram Account: Green Door Spotter
This report responds to the course prompt: “How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”
Instagram; a platform of user-convenience
INTRODUCTION
In its ninth year, Instagram has been dubbed one of the biggest social networks worldwide, and is the preferred social media account for American teenagers according to data from Statista. With such popularity comes an inquiry into how Instagram utilises its affordances, and navigates its constraints to become a user-friendly platform where individuals can capture every day moments. This report will use real examples to unpack how specific affordances of Instagram enable it to be user-convenient, while also exploring the constraints of distributing Instagram posts to other social media platforms.
BACKGROUND
In order to think of Instagram as a user-convenient platform that affords users to develop their own style, its helpful to recognise Instagram’s key demographic. Data from Statista suggests more than 70% of Instagram’s users are between the ages of 18-29 years. With this knowledge, it is fair to assume that back in its 2010 launch, creators were aware that most Instagram users were not “professionals equipped with large machines” (Zylinksa, 2016, p.7). Because of this, Instagram chose to combine all the steps of authoring, publishing and distributing photo and video content in the one application. In this sense, we can see Instagram as significantly lowering entry barriers to the average the user in “producing photos on the go, in real time” (Manovich, 2016). Within the one free application, users are able to condense all stages of capturing, publishing and distributing across the network instantly, without any financial cost or need for another application, meaning “we are all photographers now” (Zylinksa, 2016, p7). Digital photography and the development of the iPhone which affords Instagram’s software has seen users create content which does not need the labour-intense dark rooms used in works by legacy photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. Instead, we can recognise Manovich’s suggestion of Instagram’s primary aim of being an app for sharing photos with people, not an app for photographers (Manovich, 2016).
EVIDENCE/WHAT
Growing up in the era of Instagram, my prior experience with social media and iPhoneography meant I already had “strong clues into the operations of things” (Norman, 1998, p.2). But despite knowing how to use the app, understanding Instagram as a ‘conceptual model’ comprising of affordances, constraints and mapping was not familiar. In this sense, this task forced me to consume and think critically about the visual language in which Instagram operates in; where users have to navigate around logical, physical, cultural and semantic constraints and utilise the affordances that make Instagram a platform of popularity.
Thinking about Instagram as being a tool for “aesthetic visual communication” was a driving force behind the creation of my Green Door Spotter Instagram and its colour theme (Manovich, 2016, p.41). It is within the authoring stage of Instagram that attempts were made to try and emulate some of Instagram’s “medium-specific aesthetic” (Berry, 2018, p.8). With reference to a study in Tokyo, Manovich explores Instagram as having an aesthetic which “captures the more fleeting and unexpected moments of surprise, beauty and adoration in the every day” (Manovich, 2016, p.6). With this in mind, using Instagram’s affordances of over 40 filters, adding multiple posts within my week 11 video post, using hashtags and uploading stories were crucial elements to make my Instagram account one which was both software literate and a documentation of the doors around me.
In order to ensure I was effectively navigating the constraints of Instagram while taking advantages of its affordances, understanding “media software; its genealogy, its anatomy and it’s practical and theoretical effects” was at the forefront of my mind (Khoo et al, 2017, p. 6). To gain followers and account interaction, I followed numerous other accounts, and placed some information and a related Youtube link in my bio for context. I also always used a personal hashtag. Choosing a unique theme – the colour green, automatically assisted in streamlining my Instagram content within the authoring and publishing stages, forcing captions and images to be chosen that relate to the theme and visual language I was trying to communicate with.
EVALUATION
User-convenience is at the very forefront of the authoring and publishing stages in Instagram. With its inbuilt camera, variety of filters and editing software, it appears Instagram’s affordances – particularly its editing ones, can make sense to the most illogical user out there. As Manovich suggests, “Instagram filters enabled people to make “bad’ photos look “good” (Manovich, 2016, p.41).
However, it is the practice of distributing Instagram posts to other social media platforms which proved essential in revealing the constraints embedded within Instagram’s network. As observable in Week 11, making a post for Instagram relies upon Instagram’s unique software, so something is made which follows its medium-based aesthetic. That is, content becomes platform specific, and is both authored and published in a way that is most successful for Instagram’s unique vernacular. When we then distribute an Instagram post to Twitter, Tumblr or another platform, the difference in software means the post will never look quite the same. When distributing an Instagram image to twitter, the difference in format sees a photo be condensed to just a caption and link; therefore potentially working against the post, as opposed to helping gain interaction, as most forms of distribution would.
Instead, through this practice, the most successful form of distribution for Green Door Spotter were hashtags. By choosing quite broad and popular hashtags such as #doors or #nature, each post was propelled into a wider stream of like-minded content, where other accounts which do not follow Green Door Spotter can start to engage with its content. Each post which used hashtags gained slightly more likes than earlier posts which did not use any. Hashtags, within this specific Instagram account, have proven to be the most reliable, convenient and simple form of distribution.
CONCLUSION
As part of new media, Instagram is continuously evolving from its 2010 ‘square-only’ self; to a self-sufficient platform with its own “vernacular photography” (Manovich, 2016, p.53). But while Instagram evolves and changes, the affordances of its simple software help it to remain as a platform users find convenient and easy to use.
Within the Green Door Spotter Instagram, distribution attempts to other social media platforms were less successful, and did not drive engagements with any posts. The discontinuity between Instagram and other platforms such as Twitter meant images could not be shared in the same way they were originally published. Instead, hashtags became the unsung distribution heroes which worked to drive engagement from users which were not following the account; subsequently gaining the account a few more followers. On a personal level, I believe the strengths of this task lie within the analysis provided in blog posts from weeks 10 and 11, and their detailed explorations into the use of the Instagram story and the errors of using twitter in the distributing process.
Ultimately this research has helped to critique Instagram’s software, while simultaneously understanding its affordances – something which will lead to improved media content in the future.
(1127 words).
REFERENCES
Berry, T. B 2018, ‘Situating Videoblogging’, Institute of Network Cultures, viewed 14 March 2018, pp. 9–22, http://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Videoblogging-Before-YouTube-web.pdf
Khoo E, Hight C, Torrens R, Cowie B 2017, ‘Introduction: Software and other Literacies’ in Software Literacy: Education and Beyond, Springer, Singapore, pp.1-12.
Manovich, L. 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image. University of San Diego, USA, pp. 24-113.
Norman, D 1999, ‘Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2)’, Nielsen Norman Group, viewed 1 April 2012, http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html
Zylinska, J 2016, “Photomediations: An Introduction by Joanna Zylinkska“, Open Humanities Press, pp.7-16.
