Assignment 3 – Report
Name: Rachel Webster s3662089

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

Making Media blog links

Week 9 – Instagram photo
Week 9 – Instagram video
Week 10 – Instagram photo
Week 10 – Instagram video
Week 11 – Instagram photo
Week 11 – Instagram video

This report responds directly to the course prompt:

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

Title of report: The Design of Instagram

Introduction:

I have titled my report ‘The Design of Instagram’. This is to directly reference Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things (1998) and to emphasize how Instagram’s design affects how users’ author, publish and distribute their content in the network. I will be analysing my own experiences with Instagram and comparing this to the development of professional photographers on Instagram. I will be putting my analysis in context with the shift of new media and the contemporary media and social media practices.

Background:

Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social media platform that provides users with the ability to upload or take photos and videos using the in-built camera feature, edit their photos, share and distribute these photos using features which I will explore later. Instagram combines all of the engaging elements of traditional analogue mediums from the 19th and 20th century; such as the use of the dark room, publishing or distributing through exhibition galleries or magazines and combines them all into one platform (Manovich 2016, pp. 11, par. 2).

Evidence/What?:

Cultural practises are situated within Software Studies, which look at the community around Instagram and the types of practises defined. On Instagram the user’s engagement, as Khoo, Hight, Torrens and Cowie (2017, pp. 5) state are “both fostered and constrained through the affordances which that piece of software provides.” Affordances refers to the ability of a user to engage with an object in certain ways. This relationship is imperative for designers to consider, as the design of any product should always be useable. Affordances are often taken advantage of when the user knows what to do by looking without instructions, I found this to be true as I have already been regularly using Instagram for a while, therefore the making media assessments became a way for me to challenge or expand my knowledge. Through @doorwaysoftheuniverse I started to analyse more of which content had better engagement, therefore, with this understanding I could continually work at and improve the next post to continue to reach new audiences. Throughout these assessments I also encountered Instagram’s different affordances and constraints which posed many different challenges for authoring, publishing or distributing my content. However, by users having the ability to work with these affordances or navigate around them propels their content to become more networked.

Evaluation:

Authoring:

Instagram established itself as an easy to use and user-friendly platform, however, it’s affordances and constraints become problematic in the authoring process. Instagram is designed so that users are restricted in that they can only take and post photos and videos in the square forma and using the in-built filters or edit tools available. When you analyse professional Instagrammer’s, they are navigating the app by authoring their content using high quality camera devices, like DLSR’s or high-quality phones, and editing their content on other third-party apps, like Adobe Photoshop or Premiere Pro. They find they have more creative control over their images where they can give their page a distinct stylized or photo-realist look. This is the contemporary photo culture of the 21^stcentury, especially on Instagram. Thus, what we consider “ordinary” continues to change as Instagram sets this standard, the standard of what users consider to be worth sharing (Manovich, 2016, pp. 65). Instagram’s constraints work against the photo culture of today and restricts user’s ability to create these striking and interesting photos. I agree with how Manovich states that the “production and presentation of beautiful images, experiences, styles, and user interaction designs is central for its economic and social functioning” (Manovich, 2016, pp. 117). The affordances of Instagram drive users to other cameras in order to achieve content that is worth sharing and therefore more networked.

Publishing:

Instagram publishing affordances provides users with more control over how their content is shared. Users have control over how their content is captioned, they can add tags, hashtags and geo-tagging their location. This process is simple and enables users to connect directly and personally with an audience by sharing their visual experiences (Palmer 2014, pp. 249, par. 5). These publishing features play a crucial role for users in gaining an audience. As through the making media exercises, by using different hashtags I got a different audience each time who share the particular interests of that related tag.

What is interesting with publishing on Instagram now, is that users are thinking beyond the individual photo or video they are posting and more to how it will reflect the theme or style of their overall page. Manovich (2016, pp. 126 & 127) establishes that there are the unspoken rules of Instagram that are, “develop a particular style and always use it for all the photos in your feed [and] establish and follow a particular temporal pattern for your feed”. This is due to how Instagram affords the 3×3 grid layout which changes the definition on what is considered good Instagram content. It is no longer, like with analogue photography, about capturing that one perfect image but thinking about how a specific photo will look and affect their overall online representation. However, it is another example of, how the professional Instagrammer’s, as Manovich (2016, pp. 130) describes “exploit the specific properties, affordances, advantages, and limitations of the medium Instagram” that are now deeply embedded within the design community.

Distributing: 

While publishing and distributing become blurred on Instagram, there is a distinct restriction on how Instagram content becomes networked. A critical aspect of this prompt was how Instagram’s affordances affect the distribution of photos and videos in the network. Instagram places emphasis on the ability to share content with friends and family as in the age of Web 2.0 all content therefore should be networked and those without any connections are referred to as a dead-end on the Internet (Niederer 2018, pp. 17, par. 3). Instagram is successful at providing users with the ability to apply tags, geo-tag their location or add hashtags to their content. Instagram released a blog post stating that they had 400 million users and 80 million images were shared daily (Instagram 2015). All of these users would find these features advantageous to sort through and order the surplus amounts of Instagram content.

I would strongly argue, however, that Instagram distributes best within itself. Instagram only provides users with the ability to upload one link to their home page and individual links in Instagram Stories, even so these open within the app. Sharing Instagram content to other social media sites hinders user’s creativity on Facebook or Twitter as the image is not properly shown or the hashtags that work on Instagram don’t translate to these sites.

Conclusion: 

In the context of potentially working in social media or related media industries I find Instagram’s design to be constricting on creativity but worthwhile for publishing or sharing content. The making media assessments were valuable in understanding Instagram’s structure and content and in the future, this will be useful for navigating the platform, exactly like many of the professional Instagrammer’s, in order to sustain user’s engagement in the ultra-competitive social media market. In my report, it would have been useful to discuss further the deep effects the affordances have on Instagram and an analysis of how it may evolve in the future.

References:

Instagram 2015, ‘Celebrating a Community of 400 Million’, blog post, September 22 2015, viewed 1 June 2019, <https://instagram.tumblr.com/post/129662501137/150922-400million>.

Khoo E, Hight C, Torrens R, Cowie B 2017, Software Literacy: Education and Beyond, Springer, Singapore, Introduction: Software and other Literacies, pp. 4-6.

Manovich, L 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA, Introduction: Instagram Platform as a Medium pp. 9-21, Part 2. Professional and Designed Photos pp. 58-69, Part 4.Themes, Feeds, Sequences, Branding, Faces, Bodies pp. 115-121 & 126-133.

Niederer, S 2018, Networked images: Visual Methodologies For The Digital Age, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, Part 1: Image Research, pp. 16-18.

Palmer, D & Goggin G, Hjorth L (eds) 2014, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, Routledge, New York, Mobile Media Photography, pp. 249.