Assignment 3 – Report
Name: Anhar Al-Shameri

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

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?

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

 

 Instagram…just for pretty content? 

 

Introduction

Prior to this course, I have never quite realized the multiple ways Instagram has changed the concepts of photography and videography. Instagram always appeared to be a piece of software that encourages sharing the pretty side of one’s life – aesthetic wise. In a way, it came off as an application software that limited its users’ photography to one type of atmosphere and mood (Manovich, 2016) and that made the app a competitive platform. Hence, one wouldn’t usually post an image unless it had that “Instagram” quality about it.

Posterior to this course, I learned using Norman’s concept of affordances on Instagram as an object that allows you to do things and not allow you to do certain things.  Don Norman specifies that there are a couple ways for an object to perform tasks, and one of these ways is to actually stop you from doing tasks, in other words putting constraints. He specified four different kinds of constraints: physical, semantic, cultural, and logical (Norman, 1998). In the following report, I’m going to reflect on my own media practice in making these photos and videos and in doing so think about Instagram when examined as an object with affordances that lets me do things and constraints certain kinds of photography and videography practices. My report will provide more information on photography than videography, because I have no experience with the latter.

 

Authoring

To begin with, I don’t identify myself as a photographer. My photography is mediocre at best and I don’t spend hours on editing the photos that I take. An explanation for this would be that I don’t really like to put much effort when taking pictures. Yet, capturing photos for the sake of this assignment with Instagram didn’t require a lot of effort – if any effort at all. I found this interesting as the usual authoring life-cycle has changed dramatically with Instagram in comparison to legacy photography and pre-Instagram online photography. Since Instagram is a mobile phone app, a mobile phone is all you need to create Instagram photography; the camera is your phone and the editing software is Instagram! In other words, ‘Instead of being concerned with hundreds of different cameras and pieces of professional equipment and endless possible editing operations available in Photoshop and or Adobe Lightroom, we only need to consider one native app that have limited number of controls and filters and one type of camera’ (Manovich, 2016, p. 12). Hence, Instagram is a software that gives opportunities to lazy/amateur photographers like myself and constraints professional photographers/videographers that want to use professional cameras and complex editing software. Yet, multiple successful instagram photographers use advanced equipment and editing softwares as that seems to increase user engagement and, consequently, followers. Arguably, Instagram could make anyone a photographer, just by posting in its platform. Moreover, there is the constraint of the square format.  According to Manovich, this unified constraint on image aesthetics to millions of people distinguishes Instagram as a photography platform from other applications (Manovich, 2016). At times, I found the square/grid format to be an aid in composing my pictures in a symmetrical manner. Yet, sometimes it was a nuisance to crop certain parts of my image/video to make it “fit”.

Through my media practice, I discovered that Instagram doesn’t have good editing tools for videos, unlike photos. This forces the videos to appear amateur and not as highly produced, which constraints videographers. Perhaps, this is because Instagram is primarily a photography platform, and the only videos that can fit into its collection are the amateur comedic/humorous ones. Furthermore, to record a video for this assignment via Instagram, I needed to be holding the recording button throughout the process or else the recording stops. Since this limit the use of both of my hands, the video turned out to be shaky with limited content, which is another major constraint to videographers.

 

Publishing

 

Before Instagram, my work hasn’t really been published in a legitimate sense. I’m not a professional photographer/videographer – my photography/videography wouldn’t be published in print or in TV. Nor did I own a private website, so my photography wasn’t published online either. Hence, I wouldn’t take pictures/videos with the intention of publicly publishing them, but rather to show them to my family and friends.
With the introduction of Instagram and the affordance of immediate publishing, users consider public opinion and feedback before even capturing their photos/videos. Moreover, the way Instagram affords immediate feedback by liking (literally just a double-tap) and commenting reinforces the creation of a media that is meant to be liked by others. This also promotes the publishing of a certain standard of photography and videography. On the other hand, Instagram provides the opportunity to make published content more interactive by the use of features like location, tagging other users, captions with emojis. Furthermore, it gives you more control over the appearance of your published media by allowing users to edit post-publishing or just the maintenance of a certain aesthetic. Lastly, Instagram was able to make heterogenous media be published to one standard of image size, proportion, and presentation of dates and geographic information (Manovich, 2016). I find this standardization to be somewhat culturally shifting.

 

Distribution

 

As per my previous point, public consumption wasn’t considered into my media production. This was partly, because sharing and distribution (and publishing in my case) were limited. With Instagram, however, sharing is another instant feature. After taking the picture/video, editing it, and publishing it, the affordance of simple linking to other social media accounts ensures immediate exterior distribution. As for distribution within the app, adding a hashtag will suffice to do the job. I tried this for the first time through this assignment, and the results amazed me! I got followers and likes in seconds. The reason I haven’t used hashtags before in my captions, unless sarcastically, is because I thought they ruined the caption or the mood of the photo/video. So, it was a personal constraint to me. To further pursue this, a photo could be posted in multiple accounts in professional circumstances. For example, when a celebrity collaborates with a magazine in a photoshoot, it’s very likely that both parties will post the cover of the magazine.‘This sharing behavior does not have direct historical equivalent in media history as far as I can see’ (Manovich, 2016, p. 17). So, Instagram promotes sharing like no other application and I, personally, testify to that.

 

Conclusion

 

This assignment gave me a hands-on experience with Instagram as a software of many affordances and constraints. It also gave me the opportunity to note the way it’s changing the definitions of photography and videography in the contemporary world. It provided a good opportunity to practice the theoretical knowledge we had throughout the course. I might have limited my report’s credibility by not capturing photos using Instagram, but rather with my original phone’s camera app as it is more accessible. Furthermore, my videography wasn’t as well-made as my photography, because of my lack of experience. Thus, limiting my learning of how high-quality videos are authored, published, or distributed in Instagram. Yet, it’s safe to assume that Instagram isn’t a suitable platform for professional videographers due to its limited video-related options. So, in actually practicing online photography and videography through Instagram I was able to see how Instagram as a piece of software actually has a very specific language that enforces its users to use. It does this through the fore mentioned affordances and constraints. According to Khoo, ‘As particular affordances become familiar to users, and become naturalised to some extent within specific forms of practice, they can become associated with specific ways of thinking’ (Khoo, 2017, p. 5). In relation to Instagram, it has transformed the cultures of photography by changing the user’s own way of tackling photography as a practice. I noticed this in the way that Instagram affords to make anyone a ‘photographer’ – all you have to do is post on the app.

 

Moreover, the theme of this assignment wasn’t easy to abide to, especially since “doors” aren’t exactly the epitome of Instagram content. However, posting about only doors cleared out a misconception I’ve had. I’ve always thought of Instagram as a platform of one type of content, completely disregarding its individualistic quality and cultural identity.Like Manovich states, It ‘gives young people at least as much power in crafting unique identities as music’ (Manovich, 2016, p. 90). Also, ‘digital cameras and editing and publishing tools as exemplified by Instagram provide the crucial mechanism to further refine and “individualize” these basic identities (Subcultures)’ (Manovich, 2016, p. 90). To sum it up, Instagram affords to support all sorts of content (with the exception of HQ videos) by unifying said content with the same constraints. In fact, I’ve noticed that authenticity and persona matter more to followers than visually pleasing content.

 

 

References:

Al-Shameri, A 2018, Instagram, viewed 21 September 2018, <https://www.instagram.com/anharalshameri/ >

Witness 2018, Instagram, viewed 16th March 2018, < https://www.instagram.com/witness/ >

Khoo, E 2017, Software Literacy: Education and Beyond, Springer Briefs in Education.

Manovich, L 2016, Instagram and Contemporary Image, University of San Diego.

Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York