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

CURRENT STATE OF INSTAGRAM

The modern western society that we live in today is in a state of constant evolution, particularly due to its opportunistic and symbiotic relationship; shaping one another continuously.
Instagram has held a unique relationship with society, compared to other form of social media. Facebook experienced rapid growth and advancement; in terms of users and well as the platform itself. Controversy and growth at such a rate damaged the platform irreparably, denying itself a chance for trial and error. Instagram on the other hand was able to learn from the mistakes of others and built upon the successes of it’s competitors which is the reason why it has become one of the most dominating platforms of today.

In reference for his own novel ‘Technology Affordances’, B. Gaver states that the term “affordance” comes from the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson [9, 10], who developed an “ecological” alternative to cognitive approaches. The cognitive approach suggests that people have direct access only to sensations, which are integrated with memories to build up symbolic representations of the environment and its potential for goal-oriented action. Instagram began as a simple image-sharing based social media service, learning from the likes of those around it, but now instead of following the affordances of social media of the time, it now has come to shape how we engage with our phones, how we view images, how we view one another, and the expectations of presentation –morphing the ideals around photo-manipulation. Gaver further continues to state that affordances as a whole imply “the physical attributes of the thing to be acted upon are compatible with those of the actor, that information about those attributes is available in a form compatible with a perceptual system, and (implicitly) that these attributes and the action they make possible are relevant to a culture and a perceiver”. Thus, as social media as a whole, particularly Instagram, have developed alongside growing and advancing technology, so too does our relationships with such. With the rise of touch screen technology and the ability to carry compact high powered computing devices in our pockets, the relationships with said technology has progressed – with opportunity turning to reliance. In that, the ability to view photos on the fly has become a dependency; photos becoming rampant opportunity for marketing as well as sharing aspect of everyday life.

However the state of Instagram may slowly be becoming ‘old’ to many users in spite of it’s progression and constant state of evolution. Social media is supposed to incite an ease of use, making it more desirable for users, (the easier a service the more your promoted affordances to such will likely stick), yet now it almost seems to have become a lengthy, if not ritualistic process to upload. The mandatory step of editing and filters not only makes the process more arduous but implies to a user that the image alone is not worthy to meet their terms and conditions; stating that affordances of Instagram have a higher value for aesthetics over all else, potentially invoking self-judgement and doubt into their own users. In this, it will make it less likely for authentic images to be uploaded as that many will attempt to mimic what’s popular in the mainstream: the fact that they only allow for a certain amount of filters alone already rapidly reduces the range of artistic merit available to those wishing to upload and share. Not only is this damaging to their users, but greatly to themselves, possibly even detrimental.

INSTAGRAMS EFFECTS ON US, AND OUR SUBSEQUENT EFFECTS OF INSTAGRAM

In the opening statements of their book ‘Photomeditations; A Reader’ Kamila Kuc, and Joanna Zylinska lead by reference; marking that “In the words of Susan Sontag, ‘To live is to be photographed, to have a record of one’s life, and therefore to go on with one’s life oblivious, or claiming to be oblivious, to the camera’s nonstop attentions” (Sontag 2004), this motif has seemingly become synonymous with Instagram as a whole, being a educational step up from the colloquial phrase ‘pics or it didn’t happen’. This has become particularly poignant, seemingly becoming more and more true as time goes on. As that photomeditations correlate directly to the affordances and our relations to photography, it is through Instagram itself that we can track how our relationship with photography has changed. Cameras were once bulky and expensive equipment that few could afford, let alone carry around all day to capture life on an everyday basis. However that is far from the case today, with seemingly every single person in possession of a high quality camera with the ease of fitting into ones pocket. Photography has become an essential in everyday life, not only for purposes of documentation, but also the representation of self; granting the user of the camera to project a portrait or view of themselves, but also to allow for the chance of greater self-reflection – allowing yourself to track progress and development of self in a slow time-lapse through the images you capture. In that, “photography does not merely represent life but also participates in its active cutting and shaping” (Sontag), exemplifying that photography as had an increasingly important role in modern day society; one in which a Facebook rant is too cumbersome to consume, and a tweet is not long enough to convey thought, and so instead we turn to pictures to tell a thousand words.

THE FATE OF INSTAGRAM/WHERE IT IS YET TO GO

Whilst Instagram has had near immeasurable effects on society as a whole, it’s role is far from over; whether that means it is yet to fail and fade, being left as an example of ambition, or to change with the times is yet to be seen. In that, Instagram’s ambition to expand and change may very well be its undoing as that the more it expands, the more it changes, and the more it changes, the more morphs the photomeditations of the mainstream, and consequently our affordances with photography as a whole. In his works with Donald Norman in the book ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ Adrian Miles coins the term of ‘creeping featurism’, arguing that “Creeping featurism is the tendency to add to the number of features that a device can do, often extending the number beyond all reason…Creeping featurism is a disease, fatal if not treated promptly”. – Instagram is slowly falling victim to this adding more and more features; expanding text count on images, including its own search engine, as well as the introduction of Instagram TV. The step of filters being a process that is mandatory to go through, skipping it or otherwise, adds a sense of arduousness to the process of uploading photos. It’s often said that simplicity is the best route, but with Instagram edging further away from this, adding more new steps and an internal search engine, it is arguable that they are beyond the point of no return. “ If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual.” – in that, Instagram have known nothing but success and profit, when in reality they could be on the verge of collapse, merely requiring one false move to set it all in motion.

Despite dominating the audio chatroom for years, Skype never expected the rise of discord to come about. YouTube, despite having the competition of Vimeo, could not have anticipated the popularity of Twitch as a preferable streaming service for many. Facebook today is a far-cry from what it once was; even though it is still used by billions daily, it has waned in power and has lost the preference for many as a jack of all trades, primarily becoming event-sharing-based. With Facebook’s ownership of Instagram and subsequent overlapping of terms and affordances, how long until a new platform rises up? One with a fresh interface and usability, as well as different terms of engagement with users; one set with its own affordances.

Gaver B 1991, ‘Technology Affordances’, Proceeding CHI ’91 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 79-84.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cv4VW54jvL9wPkSthwoUj61B9YqAy8FQ/view

Miles, Adrian. Norman, A. Donald. ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ Basic Books, Inc. New York, NY, USA ©2002
http://www.nixdell.com/classes/HCI-and-Design-Spring-2017/The-Design-of-Everyday-Things-Revised-and-Expanded-Edition.pdf

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/photomediations/
Kuc, Kamila, and Joanna Zylinska, editors. Photomediations: A Reader. Open Humanities Press, 2016

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

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