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Blog Posts
Word count: 1016
A social experiment with Instagram
Introduction
In this report I discuss my experience with using Instagram within the last 4 weeks. I highlight my experiences by referencing both my blog posts, and the readings that we have covered throughout this semester.
Background
Analog media creators such as Horst Faas I have the deepest respect for. You might be asking why and these are my thoughts. See, before we had social networking sites such as Instagram or Facebook Analog media creators would’ve had such a hard time publishing and distributing their work for the masses. With the introduction of social networking platforms it has allowed a new wave of authoring, publishing and distributing that was previously never seen before or even available. As well as this the concept of affordances has played dividends with the progression and advancements being made in social media, but more specifically Instagram. The affordances of Instagram has allowed for new wave of photographers to publish and distribute their content in a way that was previously unthinkable.
Evidence/What?
Instagram is an interesting platform for a few reasons. First one being that Instagram was really just a platform for people to share what they had for brunch. But it evolved into something that people needed. It created a whole lot of new features that made people feel as if their Instagram needed to be special and stand out. In some respects this is similar to what Apple is doing with their ecosystem integration of software and hardware. An example of this would be my week 10 video. That video I don’t think technically is very good, It really isn’t anything special. But Instagram’s software allows it to feel special for me, and this is also due to the fact that Instagram can make content feel more special due to the integration of things such as filters. By introducing things such as filters where users can improve the look and feel of their content, Instagram creates this ‘cult’ where users see how aesthetically pleasing peoples profiles are, and in return it makes users want to make sure that their posts are of the highest quality. This was further emphasised in the week 7 reading ‘Mobile Media Photography’. “The initial development of these nostalgic photo apps was arguably a means to obscure the relatively poor quality of camera phone images, but the undeniable and enduring appeal of the vintage look is clearly related to its ability to give flattering portraits and romanticise otherwise ordinary scenes”(Palmer,D 2014). I myself related to this abstract from Palmer as I experimented with filters throughout the last few weeks with my Instagram posts, with every weeks posts in my opinion looking rather bland until a filter was added. Due to the software affordances of Instagram, we also can see the differences between an professional photo and a regular photo. This is what Lev Monovich breaks down in his book ‘Instagram and the Contemporary Image’. Monovich comments “Professional” refers to the systematic use of rules of “good photography” by Instagram authors, and not aesthetic quality of the photos or person’s photo training”. With this in mind I understand that my Instagram account for networked media lies in the casual category of blogging. This was because for me I was just snapping a few photos or videos on my phone to post, I don’t think the fundamentals of those photo’s are compatible to my personal Instagram where I use professional equipment to take photos.
Evaluation
Back in week 3 we covered Don Norman’s ‘The Design of Everyday Things’. In this book Norman examines the concept of ‘affordances’. “The term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of how the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possible be used” (Norman,D 1998). Linking this to my experiment with Instagram I would say that there are many affordances when it comes to using Instagram as a social media platform. In this experiment I learnt that the biggest affordance when it comes to Instagram is just how easy publishing and distributing content is on this platform. Features such as adding hashtags to posts creates a wide and immense distribution of work for consumption, which is something that I think most people take for granted. However, these affordances are more prevalent with the photography side of Instagram. I ran into a few constraints with posting videos on Instagram. The biggest constraint of posting videos is the fact that the dimensions for video tends to squeeze whats in frame due to the size constraints. Another issue at hand was the duration of videos being posted. The video needs to be longer than 3 seconds but shorter than 60 seconds. This meant there was a few times where I couldn’t post a video because it wasn’t longer than 3 seconds. This was something that I previously did not know about. In regards to publishing content, I think this is something that I could’ve improved. Often my mindset was I just want to get my photo or video and post. This sort of mentality often meant my content wasn’t being authored to the best of my abilities. I tried to redeem some of the messiness of my posts by adding some filters and I think that helped to make my content a bit more pleasing to the eye but at the end of the day I still feel this is something I could have improved upon. Distribution was the biggest problem I had during this experiment. Sharing content between platforms for me was a tiresome process because I was too stubborn to download specific apps. I think that in turn I probably should’ve downloaded them to speed up the distribution process because It did take some time to post on different platforms.
Conclusion
I started this experiment not too sure what it was truly about. I think that over the past few weeks I have gotten a good grasp on concepts and terminology which has helped me find some direction. I definitely would do some things different next time, more specifically I would work on my distribution process to make it easier for me.
References:
Palmer, D 2014 ‘Mobile Media Photography’, in The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, (eds) Goggin G., Hjorth L., Routledge, New York pp. 249–55.
Manovich, Lev. 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA
Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things , Basic Book, New York (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter one pp 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) pp 81-87; (computers) pp 177-186).