Week 1: Images on the Network
Text: Niederer, S 2018, Networked images: visual methodologies for the digital age, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, pp.1-20.
This was our first week of Networked Media and we’ve been told to create weekly blogs about the content covered in lectures, tutorials and readings. I’m used to blogging, but for other people, never myself so we will have to see what comes out of this.
This week’s reading is a 2018 publication by Niederer from the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam, which was incidentally my second preference for exchange and has made me realise how forward thinking their university is.
Niederer’s research in this reading centres around moving from an ideology that categorises images as data to one that understands images as content that is networked and can be built upon by others. The author discusses images as part of a ‘network of other images, users and platforms; all of which allow one image to be studied through their ‘networkedness’(pp.14).
Niederer is proposing a methodology towards researching images that are circulating faster than ever on the web.
‘Taking networkedness and technicity of content as a methodological entry point, it becomes clear that images should not be studied as separate from their network, but rather en groupe. (Niederer, 2018,p.9)’
The author notes that meaning is created in stages:
- How the object was made
- What the image looks like
- Where and how the image travels
- How it was (or is) seen and by which audiences
(Rose, 2016 in Niederer 2018)
It is argued that we need to analyse images in relation to one another because once they’re on a network, images (especially those repeated in ways like memes) become reliant on each other and if you analyse one networked image without taking into account the context of that network you will end up with no information as to how the image came about, what is being said or what has been said about it as well as its place within the network. I think of it as playing a game of charades, but it’s just you and one the other player so there is no one else to tell you what they think or how they interpret the moves (bizarre, I know).
Niederer touches on the idea of visual vernaculars which are ‘platform-specific visual languages’ which are central to networked images. These ‘visual vernaculars’ change depending on the platform, the example is how climate change is communicated across different platforms like Facebook ,Instagram, Reddit, Twitter and tumblr. The author uses engagement metrics to analyse the different dominant visual language that are present on each platform, how these differ from each other, and what they say about the platform.
Niederer argues that ‘working with networked images entails working with collections of images in connection with their carriers and other related objects and users’ (2018, p.18) and when I’ve got more time I’ll be interested to read about the role that platforms have in determining these visual vernaculars for example, text being an integral part of networked images on Tumblr, and how integral visual communication is to Instagram.