As I sit here drinking my chocolate milkshake with 2 shots of coffee on my lunch break at work, scrolling through my Instagram feed, I wonder….

Why am I so concerned with what other people think of me?

Why do I feel the need to update my feed every time I pick up my phone?

Why do the number of love hearts and comments underneath my photo matter?

And the real answer is, it doesn’t. None of this matters.

My social media habits are patterns formed over a number of years due to conditioning, manipulation and an emphasis on the desire to receive affirmation in the form on online modes of acknowledgement whether it be likes, comments or other forms of engagement.

Social media is a social construct, a narrative of sorts. And we as a society have followed this narrative in order to fill this void that social media dependancy has created.

This virtual dependancy is fast becoming a problem amongst teenagers and has been the cause of many mental illness related issues.

A screenshot taken from my Instagram explore page

An article published by the BBC outlined the dangers of continuous social media use, linked to various health issues which can be found in the article below.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unknowns

Now back to my vain reality, what’s in a like?

As I sit on my phone refreshing my Instagram feed after just posting a photo, waiting to see the hearts pop up at the bottom of my screen, I ponder why we are so fixated on receiving likes on our photos.

My latest Instagram post

If Instagram removed the ‘like’ feature’ completely, would we still want to use the platform in the same way we do now? (Keeping in mind its original intention was to share photos)

This idea of the Web 2.0 has shifted the focus

“away from conceiving the internet as a technological space… towards it being embedded within the social” (Hinton & Hjorth 2013, pg 17)

Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer a phone call over a text, or better yet, a face-to-face conversation over a FaceTime.

I beg to ask the question, does the value of a photo change depending on the number of likes?

A screenshot taken from an account I follow on my Instagram feed

Will my little red heart greatly contribute to this cause, or will it boost the popularity of the page?

via GIPHY

I guess it’s something to think about….

References:

Hinton, S & Hjorth, L 2013, Understanding Social Media, Sage Publications, London.

When it comes to posting on the internet, there is a fine line between sharing and over-sharing information.

If we look at celebrities in particular, their social media presence can either make or break their careers. No longer can pregnancies be hidden, rumours be avoided nor outrageous slurs be overlooked.

Every single word or image posted on the internet is available for the public to scrutinise.

In the case of rapper Kanye West, his undeniable presence on Twitter has caused major backlash for his controversial opinions.

Below are only a handful of some of his most outrageous tweets:

https://thetitlemag.com/culture/kanye-west-craziest-best-tweets-twitter/

https://twitter.com/worldstar/status/988824105511243778

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5656719/Kim-Kardashian-scolds-Kanye-West-Twitter-shares-photos-family-home-amid-bizarre-rant.html

In a world where communication is mainly carried out screen-to-screen, it is easy to see why people choose to share their daily lives online in order to stay relevant.

But when staying relevant, the more you post, the more scrutiny you receive. And ironically, the less you post, the more scrutiny you receive.

Although Kanye may not tweet everyday, the content he chooses to post on the internet, whether a sentence or a rant, can have equally detrimental effects.

If we take a look at Frank Ocean, a grammy award winning singer/songwriter who is one of the most successful yet low-key musicians of our generation, his relevancy, despite his lack of participation on social media, is still prevalent.

In this sense, Frank’s ability to:

“participate as a peer within the emerging knowledge networks that are not the product of the internet” Miles 2012, p. 203,

means that he can still connect with his fans, despite his unwillingness to engage on an everyday basis. His Tumblr page  has amassed a huge fan-base, due to him revealing personal aspects of life, which he has never spoken about in his limited interviews.

Below is his coming-out post:

https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6me6uSdO81qdrz3yo1_1280.png

If we think about this in an analytical sense, the network we involve ourselves in and what information we choose to put into these websites can determine what we get out of these services.By contributing, we can in turn share what others provide, and vice versa.

The moral of the story:

The more you put into the internet, the more you get out of it.

via GIPHY

(so have fun, and be careful what you post)

References:

Miles, A 2012, ‘Soft Cinematic Hypertext (Other Literacies)’, PhD thesis, RMIT University, Melbourne, pp. 201-208.

Affordances. A term that is not understood by all, yet are subconsciously exposed to both physically and online.

The idea of an affordance can be utilised as an excellent design tool suited to the masses based on their previous understanding of how something works. This can be through visual semiotics or the inferred use of an object.

In the words of Norman himself,

“the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine how the thing could possibly be used.” (1999, p. 9)

For example, the ‘like’ feature on Facebook is understood on a global scale as a click of a button to like a person’s content. There isn’t a written rule-book of how to use Facebook’s features as it is assumed that users will make connections between the visual; a thumbs up, and the written; ‘like’.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/5684115572

The same fundamental principle applies to a new Facebook feature designed for users to engage and explicitly express their feelings towards photos, statuses videos and other user generated content.

https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims?quality=100&image_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fo.aolcdn.com%2Fhss%2Fstorage%2Fmidas%2F226d17665a1ca09cee90224f9a7b2741%2F203453015%2Freaction%2Bgraphics.png&client=cbc79c14efcebee57402&signature=6d2713111d7de262c4f37bccb1688180b8c3871b

And if what I’ve attempted to explain still makes absolutely no sense…

References:

Norman, D 1999, Affordance, Conventions and Design (Part 2), Nielson Norman Group, viewed 5 August 2018, <https://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html>.

Norman, D 2002, The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, New York.

TED 2009, The three ways that good design makes you happy | Don Norman, Youtube, 9 March, viewed 9 August 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlQEoJaLQRA&feature=youtu.be>.

In the new age of the internet, blogs are often overlooked as an outdated platform in which to share information and connect with others.

The emergence of blogs began long before it was ‘trendy’ to post a photo of your food on a social media platform from a contemporary cafe for aesthetic purposes.

Food, fashion, health and many other categories of blogs were seen as ‘ahead of their time’ during the early 2000’s, before the social media giants well and truly took over the internet.

It’s easy to see why a platform that can be described as an

“interlinked, networked, fluid and distinctly contemporary writing practice and communicative space.” Miles (2006, p. 66)

can still thrive within the era of highly popularised social media such as Instagram and Facebook.

Although I wouldn’t consider myself an avid fan of blogs nor of the blogging era, I can see the demand for this type of digital medium.

Blog posts are usually made for light reading and crammed with all the necessary information
1. The layout is usually less-cluttered (than a newspaper article) and is divided into shorter paragraphs, spaced out sentences and accompanying imagery.
2. They are easy to access
3. They look good on a resume
4. Anyone can make a blog

Blogs are no longer subject to the unfortunate stereotype of a white woman, usually a mother in her mid to late 30’s having a mid life crisis and sudden change of career.

https://www.asweetpeachef.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Screen-Shot-2016-01-07-at-8.07.14-PM.jpg

My sister, for example, who is 2 years older than me and a fashion journalist, made a start by using blogs to post weekly content about outfits, fashion news and runway recaps. Not only did this showcase her writing skills and give her the ability to condense her works, it elevated her career as she developed a following of weekly readers.

If we consider Miles’ concept that

“how you are recognised within the context of this social informational network can be controlled by you through your blog” (2006, p. 69),

we can safely say that blogs enable people from both professional and personal standpoints to express themselves through a digital format.

via GIPHY

So happy blogging!

References:

Miles, A 2006, ‘Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning’, Screen Education, vol. 43, pp. 66-69.