“How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”

 

‘Media and technologies make possible the kind of people that we are, and the kind of societies that we have’ (Siapera 2013, p. 10)

This is the quote which has resonated with me the most this week amongst talk of “New Media” and “Social Media.”

But I can’t quite figure out if I find this to be a depressing or positive thought.

On the one hand, media, and in particular social media, can be a very powerful tool for a range of things such as connectivity, empowerment and even relaxation and enjoyment. It allows us to share, collaborate and participate in our broader community and the global world.

In a sense, it allows people to be whoever they want to be and helps people to shape their views on society, as well as their own general beliefs and values. It is argued that the media plays an important role in explaining the ‘shifts and transformations of human history’ (Siapera 2013, p. 2).

Growing up in the time that I have, I have no doubt that social media has played a part in who I am today, both negatively and positively.

Positively, I actually just enjoy social media. I like scrolling through Instagram and getting messages Facebook. It allows me to connect with people I would not regularly see otherwise and provides me with a space to share my own photos and thoughts. I can watch my little cousins grow up from afar and can laugh at funny meme’s.

 

Negatively, do I spend far too much time on my phone? Yes, without a doubt. And this is definitely an issue which our society as a whole faces.

The argument of “what is so social about social media” is absolutely relevant.

I have also seen how social media can create anxiety and feelings of low self-esteem. We are all guilty of comparing ourselves to that Instagram influencer who has the perfect life with the perfect hair and the perfect skin. But I also know that is goes a lot deeper for some people and can be seriously detrimental to their mental health.

 

 

I think I like Steigler’s argument that on the one hand technology and media are tools in the hands of humans, and on the other hand the media-centric views of humans are determined by technology (Siapera 2013, p. 11). At the same time that we benefit from media and technology, we also have to be very wary of the dangers innate within them.

Reference list:

Siapera, E 2013, Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London, UK.

 

 

“How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?

Just last week I bought a new air freshener for my car.It came in that stupid plastic packaging which is honestly near impossible to open and always results in me slicing at least one finger open.

At the time I was annoyed. I spent the whole car trip home trying to rip the packaging open, bending the plastic in every shape possible to try and make it break at some point. Sure, I could have just waited till I got home and cut the plastic open with scissors, but that wasn’t the point. The whole process was so much more complex than it needed to be.

Yet, even though this plastic wrapping had annoyed me, once I had free’d my air freshener from its constraints, I didn’t bother to think much more about it.

In comes Donald Norman and week 3 of Networked Media.

Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things raises the question

‘Why do we put up with the frustrations of everyday objects, with objects that we can’t figure out how to use…?’ (Norman 1998, p. 1)

Good question Norman.

When I really sat down to think about it (a.k.a write this blog post), how many things do we come across in our day-to-day life that are much harder to use than they need to be.

Even though this book was written in 1998, the issue of the door which Norman explains is still highly relevant today.

And I can’t even begin to tell you how many lamps that I struggle to find the switch for or how many of my friend’s television remotes I don’t know how to navigate. Yet, I pretty much use lamps and remotes, and definitely use doors, every single day. So why the constant battle?

Insert Norman’s theory on affordances.

An affordance refers to the ‘perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine how the thing could possibly be used’ (Norman 1998, p. 9).

Once I had sort of wrapped my head around the idea of affordances, I then started to think about the way they fit into the course prompt. This involved looking at the relationship between the user and Instagram, in regards to what the user can do with Instagram, as well as the physical, semantic, cultural and logical constraints of Instagram.

Whilst it was much easier to work each of these constraints out when using the example in the lecture of a LEGO motorcycle, I *think* the below might be correct for Instagram.

Physical constraints: 

• Images and videos can only be shared via the mobile app,
• A maximum of ten images or videos can be shared in each post,
• Videos must be three seconds or more.

Logical constraints:

• In order to see all of the posts shared by the users you follow, you logically know that you must scroll down to see them.

Cultural constraints:

• The bottom bar uses small graphics to show the different controls; the fact that the second graphic from the left is a “magnify glass” suggests that the user that this is the button they would use to “search.”

Semantic constraints:

• Users know that the “heart” button means you “like” the photo, whilst the “speech bubble” means comment and the “paper plane” means share.

 

As I said, I’m not entirely sure if these are correct and definitely need to do some more research on affordances but that is what I took away from this week’s readings and videos!

Reference list:

Norman , D 1998, The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, New York, NY.

“How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”

If you asked me before I did this week’s readings if I thought I was across all things ‘Internet’ and ‘networking’ I would probably say 

“Yeah sure, I know enough!’

And yes, I do certainly know enough.

I am very capable of navigating my way from Netflix, to Facebook, to my RMIT dashboard (usually in reverse order) and can share, and save, and download.

I know that typing ‘www.’ is the first step to get to almost every web page (even if you don’t really have to do that anymore) and that it stands for ‘World Wide Web.’

However, after finishing the first two readings for the week, I felt, using the language of Miles (2012), network illiterate.

In the interest of complete transparency, most of what I read about networks and Web 2.0 went straight over my head. I found myself lost in a web (pardon the pun) of media and technology jargon and honestly felt very overwhelmed. I think this was compounded by the fact that we did not actually have a lecture or tutorial this week, so we did not have the chance to dissect it all.

I therefore felt a sense of relief when I came across Adrian Miles’ ‘Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge.’

Using the analogy of print literacy, Miles was able to convey, in a more simple sense, the notion that network literacy is ‘being able to participate as a peer within the emerging knowledge networks that are now the product of the Internet’ (Miles 2012, p203) and to have a ‘much deeper understanding of the implications’ (Miles 2012, p201) of this participation.

Essentially, Miles highlighted to me something which I was already aware of, but had stopped consciously thinking about. The notion that all content, be that ‘web pages, blog posts, photos, video or any other media type’ (Miles 2012, p203), which is distributed across the network is weaved together to ‘allow ‘inter’ and ‘intra’ communication between different sorts of Internet services’ (Miles 2012, p203).

For example, on Facebook I can share posts from Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and Spotify. Scrolling through my Facebook feed right now, I can see links to events, sponsored advertisements for brands, my friend’s posts and photos, memes posted by pages which I have “liked,” videos and news paper articles. I also have the ability to share “What’s on [my] mind.”

 

Facebook is therefore facilitating the ‘collecting and sharing of information between disparate individuals or groups’ (Miles 2012, p205).

I think Jill Walker’s (2005) definition of network literacy resonates with me best, as she describes it as…

‘linking to what other people have written and inviting comments…understanding a kind of writing that is a social collaborative process…[and] learning how to write with an awareness that anyone may read it.’

 

Reference list:

Miles, A 2012, Soft Cinematic Hypertext (Other Literacies). RMIT University, (Section: Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge pp. 201-208)

Walker, J (2005), ‘Weblogs: Learning in Public,’ On the Horizon, vol. 1, pp. 112-118,

“How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”

I actually cannot describe to you my relief when I saw that this was the prompt that would shape the Networked Media course.

Whilst I know that Instagram is merely the diving board which we will use to plunge into a broader discussion of how online networks function, it was comforting to see something which I am so familiar with, in a course which I am otherwise not that familiar with at all.

I spend an embarrassing amount of time on Instagram. It is not even that I love it or even post that regularly, it is just out of habit. When I wake up in the morning, I check Instagram. When I am on the train to Uni, I spend the majority of that time checking Instagram. Bored in a lecture? Check Instagram. 

And the reason I keep checking? Well, as Niederer (2018, p. 6) said, we really do live in an ‘age of visual abundance.’ Every single time I go on Instagram (how many more times do you think I can say ‘Instagram’ by the way), there are new images to see, like and share. In this week’s reading, Niederer (2018, p. 13) states that ‘Instagram users upload 95 million photos per day.’ While this number may have shocked me slightly at first, when I actually think about it, I am not that surprised at all.

But these photos are not merely being posted online and that is the end of it.

I remember when was probably about 13 years old and Instagram was just starting to really take off. Being a young and somewhat naïve Year Eight student, I truly did believe that the more followers you had, or the more likes your photos got, the cooler you were.

Then one day, we discovered the hidden trick!

Simply by adding hashtags into the description of my photos, such as #fun #summer #friends #cool (lame, I know), I would suddenly get 500+ likes within minutes. Were they all fake accounts? Most likely. Did I care? No.

 

But, I also did not realise the gravity of what this meant.

By putting these hashtags onto my photos, Instagram was then able to share and filter them into other people’s feeds, opening the photos up to a much larger network than just the people who followed me.

Now, I work for a small business who does not invest any money in traditional advertising, but rather uses Instagram as their main marketing platform.

Having access to a business Instagram is extremely interesting as it allows you to view the insights on each of your posts (i.e. how many people it reached, how many people sent it to their friends and how many people saved it to their own Instagram) as well as the overall engagement of your account. This information then allows us as a business to learn what our followers engage best with, and thus we can alter our future posts to align with this.

 

Whilst I began this course with a sense of trepidation, I am now excited to gain an even better understanding of one of my favourite apps.

Reference list:

Niederer, S 2018, Networked images: visual methodologies for the digital age. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, pp 1-20.