Assignment Three: Report

Name: Emily Conlin

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 Nine: Instagram Video
Week Nine: Instagram Photo
Week Ten: Instagram Video
Week Ten: Instagram Photo
Week Eleven: Instagram Video
Week Eleven: Instagram Photo

This report responds directly to the following prompt:

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

TITLE – MOBILE CULTURE: HOW THE AFFORDANCES OF INSTAGRAM HAVE TRANSFORMED THE DEFINTION OF AN AMATEUR USER.

Word Count: 1185

INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND:

For every user, the social media network Instagram can mean something different. For some, it fuels their passion for sharing photography in an online space. For others, it has become a significant part of their online career. In October of 2010, this application was created for the “everyday user:” an amateur photographer as opposed to a professional. Users are encouraged to have creative liberty in capturing content on the go and in real-time (Systrom 2013). In order to allow for this, the creators of Instagram developed its affordances in an intentional way to cater for simplicity. They aimed for quick authorisation, fast publication and easy access to distribution. With the ability to take photos while using the inbuilt camera, content can be published and spread in seconds. In fact, 918 Instagram photos/videos are posted every second in 2019 (InternetLiveStats, 2019).

In order to familiarise myself with such affordances, I created my own user account on Instagram: @doors.quotes. Inspired by Donald Norman’s questioning of door affordances, I took a creative approach to my experimentation and added door related quotes to my captions. For a majority of users on this platform, the start of their journey on the app highlights them as a beginner: an amateur. Although professional photographers do use the application, it was never Instagram’s intention to cater for the experts. Instead, the rapid changing cultures surrounding user content and ‘aesthetics’ has led to ‘everyday users’ producing professional-level imagery. This becomes clearer when observing the differences between Instagram posts from 2010 and 2019. With every affordance there is a constraint which can limit an application, network or platform’s “purity,” (Manovich, 2016, pg. 12). The difference between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ in a mobile context is how the user can work around such constraints.

But what does it mean to be an amateur “photographer” in the modern age of social networking? How have the affordances of Instagram changed what it truly means to be an amateur? In this report, my documentation and discussion of my own personal data will draw back to these questions.

EVIDENCE

Growing up in the digital era, I was introduced to Instagram at the age of twelve. By this point, the application had already been around for two years, but not many people were taking it too seriously. Upon investigating the prompt, I knew I wanted to relive the carefree nature I once had when posting. In order to do so I made the deliberate decision to not follow an aesthetic but rather use words to captivate. This is an odd choice as the application itself is built on the idea of photos and videos. However, for the everyday user back in 2010, the captions also took part in telling the story. Hence, my journey as @door.quotes began. Acting as an amateur, Instagram’s affordances in relation to authoring are quite adequate. With the inbuilt camera, 38 filter options and further editing tools, what more could I ask for? For the most part I decided against conforming my posts to the ‘square’ frame, except for my final post. This is because up until 2015, Instagram constrained its users to fit their content into the confinements of a square (Stinson, 2015). I wanted to make use of a newer affordance that my younger self never had the chance to use. While I aimed to reflect the amateur user, I did fall into the habits of using third-party editing apps and highly curated the “instant” moment. (Manovich 2016 pg. 2). I intentionally tried to work around the app’s constraints such as not allowing filters on videos but tried my best to also make use of what it did afford such as trimming the length of the video and toggles which allow for quick distribution. While I never aimed for high levels of engagement in this investigation, I was soon to understand how amateur produced content in this modern age of social media was rarely interacted with.

EVALUATION

From pulling apart the data I have constructed over the past three weeks, I can now come to the ultimate conclusion: Instagram’s description of their ‘everyday user’ has now become outdated. As Manovich depicted in his own investigation of these users, “(ordinary moments) can be only of interest to the author, and therefore look ‘ordinary’ to us because we are not involved in her/his life” (Manovich, 2016, pg. 2). However, like Manovich argues, this definition of an ‘ordinary user’ isn’t applicable to every demographic. What makes them similar is their desire to communicate with their friends or family through the documentation of personal imagery. Yet, the amateur user from the early days of Instagram differs dramatically to those beginning to use the app in 2019 and this can be linked to the influence of Instagram ‘professionals’ and the culture surrounding aesthetics. From the beginning of creating a new account, Instagram prompts you to get inspired by following suggested users and using the ‘explore page’ so they can tailor content to your interests. New users are automatically faced with professional content with high levels of engagement which inspires them to transform their mundane content into something more visually appealing. This leads to less use of Instagram’s in-built affordances and more use of third-party applications, such as VSCO. Instagram has altered its affordances across the years to prevent their users from needing to rely on other applications: adding editing tools, the ability to remove the square framing and toggles to distribute onto other platforms during publishing. However, in 2015, 55% of users were reported as being aged 18-29 (Manovich 2016 pg.6). Young, everyday people are more inclined to change their user habits as a result of a change in aesthetic culture. From posting on my own account for this report, I constantly fell into the trap of trying to create content that was appealing to those engaging with it, not myself. I was heavily inspired by users such as @Sjanaelise and @Doyoutravel who are classed under the category of professional or “designed” types (Manovich 2016 pg.14); they aren’t constrained by the affordances of Instagram because they have access to professional equipment and software when authoring content. I felt the need to try to produce my photos at this level, removing myself from the app in order to edit my content to a higher quality. I didn’t want to compete with the professionals, but rather with “other amateurs” (Manovich, 2016, pg. 15). Instagram’s addition of new affordances contributed to my ability to generate better content; it’s lack of other affordances such as video filters contributed even further. There will always be the ordinary users, but it is strikingly obvious how an amateur from 2010 differs from an amateur in our modern era. It is ultimately how we view Instagram and these users evolving through time which is important.

CONCLUSION

I believe a strong point of this report is my overarching idea and claim; it prompts deep thought and questioning. My execution of this idea, however, could have been backed up by more solid evidence generated by myself or others. I do hope the ideas discussed in this report inspire others when developing their own research.

REFERENCES

Internet Live Stats 2019, 1 second Internet Live Stats, viewed 22 of May 2019, https://www.internetlivestats.com/one-second/#instagram-band

Manovich, L 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, Manovich.net, viewed 22 of May 2019, http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/instagram-and-contemporary-image

Manovich, L 2016, Subjects and Styles in Instagram Photography, Manovich.net, viewed 22 of May 2019, http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/091-subjects-and-styles-in-instagram-photography-part-1/lm_instagram_article_part_1_final.pdf

Stinson, L 2015, Instagram Ends the Tyranny of the Square, Wired, viewed 22 of May 2019 https://www.wired.com/2015/08/instagram-says-goodbye-square-photos/

Systrom, K 2013, Introducing Your Instagram Feed on the Web, Tumblr, viewed 22 of May 2019, https://instagram.tumblr.com/post/42363074191/instagramfeed