Papers by Maria Schreiber
New Media & Society , 2024
Following the notion that a greater variety of actors can engage in practices of memory work, the... more Following the notion that a greater variety of actors can engage in practices of memory work, the aim of our study is to understand how the polyphony of memory evolves in social media networks. We thus conducted an explorative study of accounts for historical figures on Instagram. The accounts were analysed regarding their thematic accentuations, the kind of material employed and presented, the level of professionalism and the social media authenticity they exuded. The result of the study is a typology of accounts for historical personalities on Instagram. We can distinguish between the following six types: virtual exhibition, social media autobiography, artist's portfolio, inspirational quotes, iconic figure and meme.
Studies in Communication Sciences, 2023
Against the backdrop of Instagram's transforming platform culture, this contribution proposes a f... more Against the backdrop of Instagram's transforming platform culture, this contribution proposes a framework for analyzing text posts as form of discursive communication. Text posts on the formerly mainly visual platform are understood as both a new social media genre and an emerging social practice. First, the genre is contextualized and grounded by recent evidence of a modal expansion, as well as through the reconstruction of transforming platform affordances. Secondly, based on long-term online ethnographic involvement and data collection, recurring categories and properties are identified within the emerging genre and differentiated in four discursive dimensions: text types, forms of (re)mediation, stance, and tonality. Variations within the dimensions are further distinguished and illustrated and their relevance scrutinized. These discursive dimensions are designed to be used as heuristics and / or analytical categories in combination with various methodological approaches from in-depth qualitative explorations to large-scale automated analyses. Finally, possible broader sociocultural implications of the emerging genre are discussed.
Mediekultur, 2023
This study investigates practices of sharing the experience of stroke on Instagram through use of... more This study investigates practices of sharing the experience of stroke on Instagram through use of the hashtag #strokesurvivor. The hashtag brings together people from different cultural backgrounds and professions and those who experience different kinds of healthcare and varying degrees of physical or cognitive impairment. Through a digital ethnography of #strokesurvivor, the conjunctive experiences and communicative practices of the community are reconstructed. Instagram enables specific forms of sociality and sharing, like long-term visual storytelling and influencer dynamics. Adapting to a transformed body and identity is perceived and practiced as a conjunctive experience and a struggle. A strong orientation towards a "normal life" is a recurring theme. Mourning and perseverance are put forward as two modes of coping with and adapting to a transforming body and self.
Medien & Altern, 2021
Der Beitrag widmet sich der Rekonstruktion von individuellen Transformationsprozessen von analoge... more Der Beitrag widmet sich der Rekonstruktion von individuellen Transformationsprozessen von analogen zu digitalen fotografischen Praktiken im privaten Kontext des Reisens, basierend auf Interviews mit vier Teilnehmenden zwischen 68 und 73 Jahren. Die Fallrekonstruktionen zeigen, dass habituelle Muster, wie Bilder produziert, medial verarbeitet und geteilt werden, starke Kontinuitäten über analoge und digitale Fotopraktiken hinweg aufweisen, diese Muster sich aber in den Fällen jeweils unterschiedlich gestalten. Die untersuchten ‚ambitionierten Amateure‘ nutzen Fotopraktiken als Hobby und Handwerk, das Teilen der Bilder ist zudem relevant für Impression Management im Freund*innenkreis. Reisen und Fotografieren zeigen sich in der Lebensphase Pension bzw. Ruhestand als bedeutsame, zeitstrukturierende Praktiken, die eng mit Bildung und Kreativität verbunden sind.
merz wissenschaft , 2020
Die Nutzung sozialer Medien hat die Möglichkeiten der Erinnerung und der Er-innerungskultur verän... more Die Nutzung sozialer Medien hat die Möglichkeiten der Erinnerung und der Er-innerungskultur verändert. Während es früher vor allem sogenannten ‚memory agents' wie Journalist*innen, Autor*innen und Museen möglich war, Erinnerun-gen an historische Figuren zu verbreiten, zeigt sich nun ein viel breiteres Feld an Akteur*innen. So finden sich auf Facebook, Twitter und Instagram Accounts von historischen Persönlichkeiten, mit diversen Zielen und sehr unterschiedli-chen Herangehensweisen und zum Teil unbekannten Initiator*innen. Für den vorliegenden Text werden Accounts historischer Figuren auf Instagram ana-lysiert und typologisiert. Konzeptuell werden die Accounts als Beiträge einer Polyphonie der Erinnerungen eingeordnet. Durch diese Variation mediatisier-ter Erinnerungen ergeben sich Fragen der Wissensvermittlung in informellen Bildungskontexten und ebenso in Bezug auf ihr Potenzial, das Interesse für Geschichte und Erinnerungsarbeit zu wecken und zu erhalten. Social media have changed the ways in which we engage with history and memory. While it used to be journalists, authors and museums-the so-called memory agents-who had an impact on what and how people remember individually and collectively, different groups of people can now contribute to mediatized remembering. Some have created accounts of historical figures on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. These accounts pursue different aims and take a variety of different approaches. We present a typology of historic accounts on Instagram. On a conceptual level, we see these accounts as contributions to a polyphony of memory. While there is great potential in broadening the scope of mediatized remembering, the presented findings also raise questions about conveying history beyond formal education.
Digital Culture & Society, 2017
This research investigates how the practices of sharing pictures with specific audiences on socia... more This research investigates how the practices of sharing pictures with specific audiences on social media may be related to aesthetics and affordances. Based on fieldwork (interviews, picture analysis and digital ethnography) with a group of female teenagers in Vienna, Austria, how they visually curate their accounts is mapped and reconstructed. Regarding content and aesthetics, different kinds of pictures are shared using different apps. Snapchat, for example, (for this specific group at the time of the investigation) is the preferred medium for live communication with very close friends using fast, pixelated, " ugly " pictures , while Instagram serves to share polished, conventional, " beautiful " pictures with broader audiences. Based on this case study, three conceptual arguments can be made. First, visual communication is practised in relation to specific social settings or audiences. Social media is part of these practices, and users navigate differences between platforms to manage identities and relationships. Second, the analysis of practices embedded in specific software, therefore, has to be contex-tualised and related to the structures of these environments. Software co-constructs processes of editing, distribution, sharing and affirmation , and its affordances have to be related to the ways in which users exploit them. Third, as visual communication becomes an intrinsic part of online communication, the exploration of how distinctions between audiences and affordances play out stylistically appears to be of particular interest, which entails calibrated aesthetics; however, this visual layer is seldom investigated closely.
This contribution proposes a methodological framework for empirical research into visual practice... more This contribution proposes a methodological framework for empirical research into visual practices on social media. The framework identifies practices, pictures and platforms as relevant dimensions of analysis. It is mainly developed within, and is compatible with qualitative, interpretive approaches which focus on visual communication as part of everyday personal communicative practices. Two screenshots from Instagram and Facebook are introduced as empirical examples to investigate collaborative practices of meaning-making relating to pictures on social media. While social media seems to augment reflexive, processual practices of negotiating identities, visual media, in particular, amps up aesthetic, ambivalent and embodied dimensions within these practices.
Sexualität in Medien ist ein gerne beforschtes, skandalisiertes und erregendes Thema in Alltag un... more Sexualität in Medien ist ein gerne beforschtes, skandalisiertes und erregendes Thema in Alltag und Wissenschaft. Medien wird oft eine machtvolle Position zugeschrieben, wenn es darum geht, Vorstellungen, Werte und Bilder von Sexualität in unseren Köpfen zu verankern. Viele Studien fragen daher nach kausalen Zusammenhängen zwischen der Rezeption bestimmter Darstellungen und dem sexuellen Handeln. Alternativ dazu wollen wir eine ganzheitliche Perspektive enwickeln und in unserem Beitrag der Frage nachgehen, wie Wis-sen über Sexualität zu historisch unterschiedlichen Zeitpunkten medial vermit-telt wurde bzw. über Medien in das Leben von Frauen getreten ist: Welche Relevanz hatten und haben welche Medien im Kontext von Sexualität? Wie wurde und wird Wissen über Sexualität medial vermittelt und angeeignet? Wie bieten Medien aber auch Räume für Imagination? Ziel ist es zu zeigen, wie der Prozess der Aneignung von Wissen über und von Sexualität kulturell, sozial und vor allem medial situiert ist. Am Beispiel von Gruppendiskussionen mit Frauen unterschiedlicher Generationen wird sichtbar werden, wie das Aufwachsen zu einer bestimmten Zeit und damit auch der Prozess der sexuellen Sozialisation kulturell und medial unterschied-lich eingebettet sein kann. Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung wird dabei als em-pirischer Weg für die Medienforschung und damit auch für eine mediensensib-le Kulturpsychologie herausgearbeitet. Diese konkrete thematische Auseinandersetzung ist gerahmt von einer Reflexion unserer eigenen wissenschaftliche Sozialisation und Forschungspraxis: Was mit empirischer Forschung in unseren Diplomarbeiten begann, wurde zu einer methodologischen Positionierung und zu einer bestimmten Perspektive auf Welt und Wissenschaft, die wir in unser heutiges Tun in Lehre und For-schung integriert haben. Die Menschen und Institutionen, die uns in den ver-gangenen zehn Jahren begegnet sind, haben unser Werden sowohl mitgeprägt und vorangetrieben als auch blockiert und gebremst – bewegt man sich abseits des Mainstreams, steht man öfter im Gegenwind. Das Institut für Kulturpsy-chologie und qualitative Sozialforschung (ikus) war für uns immer ein Ort, an dem unserer wissenschaftlichen Praxis zwar kritisch, aber stets konstruktiv und zugewandt begegnet wurde und wird. Der zehnjährige Geburtstag von ikus ist somit gleichzeitig ein persönliches Jubiläum unserer Freundschaft.
Zusammenfassung Mit der vernetzten Fotografie, also der Konvergenz aus digitaler Fotografie, mobi... more Zusammenfassung Mit der vernetzten Fotografie, also der Konvergenz aus digitaler Fotografie, mobiler Kommunikation und Social Media, ist das Teilen von Fotos heute selbst-verständlicher und zunehmend sichtbarer Teil der alltäglichen Kommunikation geworden. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt die Vielfalt an Photo-Sharing Praktiken auf. Dazu gibt er zunächst einen Überblick über die wissenschaftliche Auseinan-dersetzung mit Photo Sharing. Daran anschließend werden unterschiedliche Dimensionen, anhand derer sich Photo Sharing systematisieren lässt, vorgestellt: Anhand 1) des räumlichen Bezugs der am Prozess Beteiligten, 2) des Zeitbezugs, 3) des Umfangs des Publikums bzw. der AdressatInnen und 4) der Modi des Sharing. Der Beitrag schließt mit einer Reflexion der Implikationen für die aktuelle kommunikations-und medienwissenschaftliche Forschung.
Bildpraktiken auf Social Media Plattfor- men können als eine komplexe Verzahnung ikonischer, text... more Bildpraktiken auf Social Media Plattfor- men können als eine komplexe Verzahnung ikonischer, textbasierter und anderer Arti- kulationen charakterisiert
werden. Die
Analyse vielschichtiger Prozesse der bildli- chen und diskursiven Bedeutungskonstitu- tion stellt die qualitative Sozialforschung vor methodologische und methodische Her- ausforderungen, die in diesem Beitrag dis- kutiert werden. Ziel ist es, einen theore- tisch gerahmten und empirisch fundierten Vorschlag zu liefern, wie ein sensibler Um- gang mit Ikonizität und Medialität im Kontext von Bildpraktiken in Social Media im Paradigma der rekonstruktiven Sozial- forschung konzipiert werden kann.
Pictorial practices on Social Media can be characterised as complex entanglements of visual, textual and other articulations. The analysis of multi-layered processes of picto- rial and discursive constitutions of mean- ing poses methodical and methodological challenges to qualitative social research, which are discussed in this article. Our main objective is to propose a sensitive framework, which is theoretically and em- pirically grounded, to be able to connect iconicity and mediality in pictorial practic- es on social media within the paradigm of reconstructive social research.
This chapter attends to the question of how personal photography is practiced through and with th... more This chapter attends to the question of how personal photography is practiced through and with the smartphone by the elderly. The smartphone as a net- worked multimedia device that is always at hand is at the heart of current changes not only in personal photography, but in the mediatization of our ev- eryday lives. It clearly affords new possibilities, but how those affordances are used and how different ways of engaging with the same affordances are evolving, remains to be empirically investigated. One factor of variation are different generation- and age-specific technological experiences that seem to constitute different ways of engaging with media. While considerable research has been done on younger people and their digital photographic practices, the so-called digital immigrants, have not received as much attention. Based on an empirical example that combines the analysis of text and picture, the article shows how a sixtytwo-year-old woman adopted the smartphone as her “con- stant companion” and key device for snap photography. Her modes of showing and sharing suggest that specific configurations of hardware (smartphone) and software (e.g. WhatsApp) contain various affordances that she employs for diverging needs – while her family remains the main motif and counterpart of her photo sharing practices.
Conference Presentations by Maria Schreiber
Visual communication has become an essential cultural component of contemporary societies. Curren... more Visual communication has become an essential cultural component of contemporary societies. Currently, 400M photos are shared via Snapchat every day, 300M on Facebook, and 60M on Instagram. Showing and sharing photos has always been dependent on mediatisation, and core social functions remain significant: social bonding and communication, the demonstration of identity and belonging, and the preservation and retention of memories.
Photographic practices became more and more entangled with computer technologies, social media and specific cultures of connectivity (VanDijck, 2013) through accelerated convergence. Personal photography is now networked, ubiquitous and the smartphone as mobile device is at the heart of our everyday visual communication. Photography transformed into a "live" medium, connecting interlocutors through space rather than through time (Frosh, 2015).
We conceptualize photo sharing as practice, which means studying complex arrays of humans, pictures, communicative processes, mediality and materiality, hardware and software (Edwards, 2012; Goméz-Cruz 2016). Hence, both humans and artefacts have to be understood in their entangled, hybrid actions and agencies.
Software takes command?
In our paper, we will focus on the question how sharing personal photos online is co-constituted by visibility rules that are proposed by platform-specific dynamics and structures. It is crucial to take into account the ways in which applications co-construct the communication processes, as they "are not neutral stages of self performance—they are the very tools for shaping identities" (van Dijck, 2013, p. 213). In our analysis, we understand media practices as hybrid, joint practices of humans, hardware, and software. A useful concept that sheds light onto these entanglements is affordances, which become relevant as “set of potential uses that facilitate, limit, and structure communication and action through these media. Affordances are materially founded in media as technological artifacts, are institutionally circumscribed, and are perceptually embodied by users and audiences” (Hjarvard & Petersen, 2013, p. 5).
Gaining a deeper understanding of picture sharing practices with the smartphone means taking into account the driving forces of the screen as hardware and specific apps as software: The screen is a necessary device to translate data packages, the ones and zeros that digital pictures consist of, into something that we recognize as picture. Digital pictures are therefore always materialised situationally, dependent on data formatting and interface.
Moreover, we argue that the analysis of pictures and practices that are embedded in specific software such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat has to be contextualised and related to the structures of these environments. Understanding software in a productive sense, we are interested in how it might engender “both forces of empowerment and discipline, opportunities and threats” (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 10). Algorithms stabilize and create specific forms of sociality, they co-construct processes of editing, distribution, sharing and affirmation among users. Taking into account hybrid agency in any media practice, we will relate these algorithmic affordances to the ways in which users navigate, exploit and subvert them.
Visibility rules are communication rules are relationship rules
Based on fieldwork in Austria and the UK, we will show how specific platforms might trigger and nurture specific politics and aesthetics of personal photography and visual communication. The analysis of different kinds of qualitative data (interviews, pictures, digital ethnography) shows that a differentiation between platforms that push publishing (Instagram, Facebook) and those that enable messaging (Snapchat, WhatsApp) is meaningful in regard to visual communication (Villi, 2015), but has to be further explored and empirically questioned. While for example sharing pictures in messaging apps is close to conversational practices, the specific sharing politics are further diversified in regard to which audiences are communicative counterparts, and which kind of pictures are shared. Choosing where to communicate becomes integral to the management of relationships (Madianou, 2014).
Snapchat for example seems to be the platform for sharing mundane, ugly selfies ("I am drinking water. I am studying. I am going outside.") with an intimate circle of friends – this is also triggered by the platform itself: if you open the app, the front-camera facing your face is immediately switched on. Shared photos vanish after a few seconds, but this function is sometimes subverted with screenshots. Snapchat now marks which pictures have been saved, but of course there are apps which enable screenshots without snapchat registering it, etc.
Regarding publishing platforms like Instagram and Facebook, many users follow the examples of celebrities self-promotion, and shape their online identities in order to gain popularity and hopefully reach a comfortable level of recognition and connectedness (van Dijck, 2013). This seems to hold especially true for users who seem to have weaker and wider-spread networks, such as classmates or colleagues. Photos are shown within these networks to remain visible and remind people that they exist. This is often framed by specific locations or activities that involve social capital (holidays, sports, or eating at a restaurant).
We will elaborate how platform-specific sharing patterns evolve and are negotiated, and how privacies and relationships are constructed through communicative practices in these specific contexts. Finally, we will explore how these visibility rules might also become apparent regarding aesthetics and style of the pictures that are shared.
References
Gómez-Cruz, E (2016) Photo-Genic Assemblages: Photography as Connective Interface. In E. Gómez-Cruz & A. Lehmuskallio (Eds.), Digital Photography and Everyday Life. Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices (pp. 228–42) Routledge.
Edwards, E. (2012). Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 221–34.
Frosh, P. (2015). The Gestural Image: The Selfie, Photography Theory, and Kinesthetic Sociability. International Journal of Communication, 9, 1607–1628.
Hjarvard, S., & Petersen, L. N. (2013). Mediatization and cultural change. MedieKultur. Journal of Media and Communication Research 54, pp. 1–7.
Kitchin, R., & Dodge, M. (2011). Code/Space. Software and Everyday Life. MIT Press.
Madianou, M. (2014). Smartphones as Polymedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(3), 667–680.
van Dijck, J. (2013). “You have one identity”: performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture & Society, 35, pp. 199–215.
Villi, M. (2013). Publishing and Messaging Camera Phone Photographs : Patterns of Visual Mobile Communication on the Internet. In K. Cumiskey & L. Hjorth (Eds.), Mobile Media Practices, Presence and Politics: The Challenge of Being Seamlessly Mobile (pp. 214–228). Routledge.
Media practices of people of different age emerge(d) and develope(d) at different historical poin... more Media practices of people of different age emerge(d) and develope(d) at different historical points of time. Experiences that are made during youth and early adulthood are regarded as formative for later habits and practices (Mannheim): generation-specific yet dynamic media cultures, that are closely related to the available media technologies, evolve. While considerable research has been done on young people and their digital photographic practices, the existence and actual characteristics of ‚digital natives’ remain contested. The so-called ‚digital immigrants’, however, have not received as much attention.
The paper will examine how senior citizens who did not grow up with digital technologies integrate digital photographic technologies in their everyday lives: Which relevance does photography have in their lives, (how) did that change throughout their lifetime? How do they adopt and adapt to digital technologies – playfully, sceptically, constrainedly? How do previous experiences with photography and technology become relevant? Etc.
Based on interviews with Viennese senior citizens who take part in a computer training course on picture editing, experiences and practices related to digital photography are reconstructed. Pictures that are provided by the participants are also included as relevant data and documents of their photographic practices.
Drawing on Belting’s understanding of the triad image – medium – body, both bodily practices and bodies made visible in pictures become relevant for analysis: The intention is to gain a deeper understanding of (1) the described (bodily) experiences, which are closely intertwined with the technologies in use (Latour) – the hybrid actors and hybrid habitus; and (2) pictures that result from personal photographic practices and their specific style and aesthetics, that can be key to visual constructions of meaning (Bourdieu; Mitchell). The paper will take a closer look at the explicit and implicit relations of power (knowledge gaps and advantages, internal motivations and external pressures,...) within the participants’ photographic practices and in the setting of the training course.
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Papers by Maria Schreiber
werden. Die
Analyse vielschichtiger Prozesse der bildli- chen und diskursiven Bedeutungskonstitu- tion stellt die qualitative Sozialforschung vor methodologische und methodische Her- ausforderungen, die in diesem Beitrag dis- kutiert werden. Ziel ist es, einen theore- tisch gerahmten und empirisch fundierten Vorschlag zu liefern, wie ein sensibler Um- gang mit Ikonizität und Medialität im Kontext von Bildpraktiken in Social Media im Paradigma der rekonstruktiven Sozial- forschung konzipiert werden kann.
Pictorial practices on Social Media can be characterised as complex entanglements of visual, textual and other articulations. The analysis of multi-layered processes of picto- rial and discursive constitutions of mean- ing poses methodical and methodological challenges to qualitative social research, which are discussed in this article. Our main objective is to propose a sensitive framework, which is theoretically and em- pirically grounded, to be able to connect iconicity and mediality in pictorial practic- es on social media within the paradigm of reconstructive social research.
Conference Presentations by Maria Schreiber
Photographic practices became more and more entangled with computer technologies, social media and specific cultures of connectivity (VanDijck, 2013) through accelerated convergence. Personal photography is now networked, ubiquitous and the smartphone as mobile device is at the heart of our everyday visual communication. Photography transformed into a "live" medium, connecting interlocutors through space rather than through time (Frosh, 2015).
We conceptualize photo sharing as practice, which means studying complex arrays of humans, pictures, communicative processes, mediality and materiality, hardware and software (Edwards, 2012; Goméz-Cruz 2016). Hence, both humans and artefacts have to be understood in their entangled, hybrid actions and agencies.
Software takes command?
In our paper, we will focus on the question how sharing personal photos online is co-constituted by visibility rules that are proposed by platform-specific dynamics and structures. It is crucial to take into account the ways in which applications co-construct the communication processes, as they "are not neutral stages of self performance—they are the very tools for shaping identities" (van Dijck, 2013, p. 213). In our analysis, we understand media practices as hybrid, joint practices of humans, hardware, and software. A useful concept that sheds light onto these entanglements is affordances, which become relevant as “set of potential uses that facilitate, limit, and structure communication and action through these media. Affordances are materially founded in media as technological artifacts, are institutionally circumscribed, and are perceptually embodied by users and audiences” (Hjarvard & Petersen, 2013, p. 5).
Gaining a deeper understanding of picture sharing practices with the smartphone means taking into account the driving forces of the screen as hardware and specific apps as software: The screen is a necessary device to translate data packages, the ones and zeros that digital pictures consist of, into something that we recognize as picture. Digital pictures are therefore always materialised situationally, dependent on data formatting and interface.
Moreover, we argue that the analysis of pictures and practices that are embedded in specific software such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat has to be contextualised and related to the structures of these environments. Understanding software in a productive sense, we are interested in how it might engender “both forces of empowerment and discipline, opportunities and threats” (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 10). Algorithms stabilize and create specific forms of sociality, they co-construct processes of editing, distribution, sharing and affirmation among users. Taking into account hybrid agency in any media practice, we will relate these algorithmic affordances to the ways in which users navigate, exploit and subvert them.
Visibility rules are communication rules are relationship rules
Based on fieldwork in Austria and the UK, we will show how specific platforms might trigger and nurture specific politics and aesthetics of personal photography and visual communication. The analysis of different kinds of qualitative data (interviews, pictures, digital ethnography) shows that a differentiation between platforms that push publishing (Instagram, Facebook) and those that enable messaging (Snapchat, WhatsApp) is meaningful in regard to visual communication (Villi, 2015), but has to be further explored and empirically questioned. While for example sharing pictures in messaging apps is close to conversational practices, the specific sharing politics are further diversified in regard to which audiences are communicative counterparts, and which kind of pictures are shared. Choosing where to communicate becomes integral to the management of relationships (Madianou, 2014).
Snapchat for example seems to be the platform for sharing mundane, ugly selfies ("I am drinking water. I am studying. I am going outside.") with an intimate circle of friends – this is also triggered by the platform itself: if you open the app, the front-camera facing your face is immediately switched on. Shared photos vanish after a few seconds, but this function is sometimes subverted with screenshots. Snapchat now marks which pictures have been saved, but of course there are apps which enable screenshots without snapchat registering it, etc.
Regarding publishing platforms like Instagram and Facebook, many users follow the examples of celebrities self-promotion, and shape their online identities in order to gain popularity and hopefully reach a comfortable level of recognition and connectedness (van Dijck, 2013). This seems to hold especially true for users who seem to have weaker and wider-spread networks, such as classmates or colleagues. Photos are shown within these networks to remain visible and remind people that they exist. This is often framed by specific locations or activities that involve social capital (holidays, sports, or eating at a restaurant).
We will elaborate how platform-specific sharing patterns evolve and are negotiated, and how privacies and relationships are constructed through communicative practices in these specific contexts. Finally, we will explore how these visibility rules might also become apparent regarding aesthetics and style of the pictures that are shared.
References
Gómez-Cruz, E (2016) Photo-Genic Assemblages: Photography as Connective Interface. In E. Gómez-Cruz & A. Lehmuskallio (Eds.), Digital Photography and Everyday Life. Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices (pp. 228–42) Routledge.
Edwards, E. (2012). Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 221–34.
Frosh, P. (2015). The Gestural Image: The Selfie, Photography Theory, and Kinesthetic Sociability. International Journal of Communication, 9, 1607–1628.
Hjarvard, S., & Petersen, L. N. (2013). Mediatization and cultural change. MedieKultur. Journal of Media and Communication Research 54, pp. 1–7.
Kitchin, R., & Dodge, M. (2011). Code/Space. Software and Everyday Life. MIT Press.
Madianou, M. (2014). Smartphones as Polymedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(3), 667–680.
van Dijck, J. (2013). “You have one identity”: performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture & Society, 35, pp. 199–215.
Villi, M. (2013). Publishing and Messaging Camera Phone Photographs : Patterns of Visual Mobile Communication on the Internet. In K. Cumiskey & L. Hjorth (Eds.), Mobile Media Practices, Presence and Politics: The Challenge of Being Seamlessly Mobile (pp. 214–228). Routledge.
The paper will examine how senior citizens who did not grow up with digital technologies integrate digital photographic technologies in their everyday lives: Which relevance does photography have in their lives, (how) did that change throughout their lifetime? How do they adopt and adapt to digital technologies – playfully, sceptically, constrainedly? How do previous experiences with photography and technology become relevant? Etc.
Based on interviews with Viennese senior citizens who take part in a computer training course on picture editing, experiences and practices related to digital photography are reconstructed. Pictures that are provided by the participants are also included as relevant data and documents of their photographic practices.
Drawing on Belting’s understanding of the triad image – medium – body, both bodily practices and bodies made visible in pictures become relevant for analysis: The intention is to gain a deeper understanding of (1) the described (bodily) experiences, which are closely intertwined with the technologies in use (Latour) – the hybrid actors and hybrid habitus; and (2) pictures that result from personal photographic practices and their specific style and aesthetics, that can be key to visual constructions of meaning (Bourdieu; Mitchell). The paper will take a closer look at the explicit and implicit relations of power (knowledge gaps and advantages, internal motivations and external pressures,...) within the participants’ photographic practices and in the setting of the training course.
werden. Die
Analyse vielschichtiger Prozesse der bildli- chen und diskursiven Bedeutungskonstitu- tion stellt die qualitative Sozialforschung vor methodologische und methodische Her- ausforderungen, die in diesem Beitrag dis- kutiert werden. Ziel ist es, einen theore- tisch gerahmten und empirisch fundierten Vorschlag zu liefern, wie ein sensibler Um- gang mit Ikonizität und Medialität im Kontext von Bildpraktiken in Social Media im Paradigma der rekonstruktiven Sozial- forschung konzipiert werden kann.
Pictorial practices on Social Media can be characterised as complex entanglements of visual, textual and other articulations. The analysis of multi-layered processes of picto- rial and discursive constitutions of mean- ing poses methodical and methodological challenges to qualitative social research, which are discussed in this article. Our main objective is to propose a sensitive framework, which is theoretically and em- pirically grounded, to be able to connect iconicity and mediality in pictorial practic- es on social media within the paradigm of reconstructive social research.
Photographic practices became more and more entangled with computer technologies, social media and specific cultures of connectivity (VanDijck, 2013) through accelerated convergence. Personal photography is now networked, ubiquitous and the smartphone as mobile device is at the heart of our everyday visual communication. Photography transformed into a "live" medium, connecting interlocutors through space rather than through time (Frosh, 2015).
We conceptualize photo sharing as practice, which means studying complex arrays of humans, pictures, communicative processes, mediality and materiality, hardware and software (Edwards, 2012; Goméz-Cruz 2016). Hence, both humans and artefacts have to be understood in their entangled, hybrid actions and agencies.
Software takes command?
In our paper, we will focus on the question how sharing personal photos online is co-constituted by visibility rules that are proposed by platform-specific dynamics and structures. It is crucial to take into account the ways in which applications co-construct the communication processes, as they "are not neutral stages of self performance—they are the very tools for shaping identities" (van Dijck, 2013, p. 213). In our analysis, we understand media practices as hybrid, joint practices of humans, hardware, and software. A useful concept that sheds light onto these entanglements is affordances, which become relevant as “set of potential uses that facilitate, limit, and structure communication and action through these media. Affordances are materially founded in media as technological artifacts, are institutionally circumscribed, and are perceptually embodied by users and audiences” (Hjarvard & Petersen, 2013, p. 5).
Gaining a deeper understanding of picture sharing practices with the smartphone means taking into account the driving forces of the screen as hardware and specific apps as software: The screen is a necessary device to translate data packages, the ones and zeros that digital pictures consist of, into something that we recognize as picture. Digital pictures are therefore always materialised situationally, dependent on data formatting and interface.
Moreover, we argue that the analysis of pictures and practices that are embedded in specific software such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat has to be contextualised and related to the structures of these environments. Understanding software in a productive sense, we are interested in how it might engender “both forces of empowerment and discipline, opportunities and threats” (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 10). Algorithms stabilize and create specific forms of sociality, they co-construct processes of editing, distribution, sharing and affirmation among users. Taking into account hybrid agency in any media practice, we will relate these algorithmic affordances to the ways in which users navigate, exploit and subvert them.
Visibility rules are communication rules are relationship rules
Based on fieldwork in Austria and the UK, we will show how specific platforms might trigger and nurture specific politics and aesthetics of personal photography and visual communication. The analysis of different kinds of qualitative data (interviews, pictures, digital ethnography) shows that a differentiation between platforms that push publishing (Instagram, Facebook) and those that enable messaging (Snapchat, WhatsApp) is meaningful in regard to visual communication (Villi, 2015), but has to be further explored and empirically questioned. While for example sharing pictures in messaging apps is close to conversational practices, the specific sharing politics are further diversified in regard to which audiences are communicative counterparts, and which kind of pictures are shared. Choosing where to communicate becomes integral to the management of relationships (Madianou, 2014).
Snapchat for example seems to be the platform for sharing mundane, ugly selfies ("I am drinking water. I am studying. I am going outside.") with an intimate circle of friends – this is also triggered by the platform itself: if you open the app, the front-camera facing your face is immediately switched on. Shared photos vanish after a few seconds, but this function is sometimes subverted with screenshots. Snapchat now marks which pictures have been saved, but of course there are apps which enable screenshots without snapchat registering it, etc.
Regarding publishing platforms like Instagram and Facebook, many users follow the examples of celebrities self-promotion, and shape their online identities in order to gain popularity and hopefully reach a comfortable level of recognition and connectedness (van Dijck, 2013). This seems to hold especially true for users who seem to have weaker and wider-spread networks, such as classmates or colleagues. Photos are shown within these networks to remain visible and remind people that they exist. This is often framed by specific locations or activities that involve social capital (holidays, sports, or eating at a restaurant).
We will elaborate how platform-specific sharing patterns evolve and are negotiated, and how privacies and relationships are constructed through communicative practices in these specific contexts. Finally, we will explore how these visibility rules might also become apparent regarding aesthetics and style of the pictures that are shared.
References
Gómez-Cruz, E (2016) Photo-Genic Assemblages: Photography as Connective Interface. In E. Gómez-Cruz & A. Lehmuskallio (Eds.), Digital Photography and Everyday Life. Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices (pp. 228–42) Routledge.
Edwards, E. (2012). Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 221–34.
Frosh, P. (2015). The Gestural Image: The Selfie, Photography Theory, and Kinesthetic Sociability. International Journal of Communication, 9, 1607–1628.
Hjarvard, S., & Petersen, L. N. (2013). Mediatization and cultural change. MedieKultur. Journal of Media and Communication Research 54, pp. 1–7.
Kitchin, R., & Dodge, M. (2011). Code/Space. Software and Everyday Life. MIT Press.
Madianou, M. (2014). Smartphones as Polymedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(3), 667–680.
van Dijck, J. (2013). “You have one identity”: performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture & Society, 35, pp. 199–215.
Villi, M. (2013). Publishing and Messaging Camera Phone Photographs : Patterns of Visual Mobile Communication on the Internet. In K. Cumiskey & L. Hjorth (Eds.), Mobile Media Practices, Presence and Politics: The Challenge of Being Seamlessly Mobile (pp. 214–228). Routledge.
The paper will examine how senior citizens who did not grow up with digital technologies integrate digital photographic technologies in their everyday lives: Which relevance does photography have in their lives, (how) did that change throughout their lifetime? How do they adopt and adapt to digital technologies – playfully, sceptically, constrainedly? How do previous experiences with photography and technology become relevant? Etc.
Based on interviews with Viennese senior citizens who take part in a computer training course on picture editing, experiences and practices related to digital photography are reconstructed. Pictures that are provided by the participants are also included as relevant data and documents of their photographic practices.
Drawing on Belting’s understanding of the triad image – medium – body, both bodily practices and bodies made visible in pictures become relevant for analysis: The intention is to gain a deeper understanding of (1) the described (bodily) experiences, which are closely intertwined with the technologies in use (Latour) – the hybrid actors and hybrid habitus; and (2) pictures that result from personal photographic practices and their specific style and aesthetics, that can be key to visual constructions of meaning (Bourdieu; Mitchell). The paper will take a closer look at the explicit and implicit relations of power (knowledge gaps and advantages, internal motivations and external pressures,...) within the participants’ photographic practices and in the setting of the training course.
DIGITAL PICTURE PRACTICES
Dimensions of Networked Visual Communication
In digital picture practices, the smartphone as mobile and thus ubiquitous device is at the core of a broad range of transformations. Every day, as billions of photos are shown and shared worldwide, networked visual communication provides an enormous amount of data, phenomena, and questions for many disciplines. Simple causal explanations of current changes in sharing practices often do not take into account continuities in photo sharing practices as well as the multifaceted and complex ways how visual communication is entangled with our everyday lives.
Therefore, this dissertation advocates and adopts a praxeological and visual-cultural perspective. This implies an approach of reconstructing the conditions of interpersonal visual-communicative processes and analysing how digital picture practices are habitually anchored in various lifeworlds.
Based on interviews, pictures, and multimodal online-documents, four lifeworlds and four social-media-apps (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat) were qualitatively investigated. I reconstructed and critically examined the conditions and dimensions of digital pictorial practices in a close dialogue of theory and empirical research.
The dissertation’s empirically grounded theoretical framework highlights that digital pictorial practices are constituted in/through the relations of practices, pictures, and media. The implications are threefold.
Pictorial practices are communicative practices. Pictures are generated and perceived in specific, visual, ways and act as elements of interpersonalcommunication.
Pictorial Practices are visual practices. Especially photographic body pictures are condensed expressions of habitual styles – even if what is shown seems to be trivial. Through body poses, facial expressions, perspective and framing, specific aesthetics, world-views and belongings are expressed and come about.
Pictorial practices are hybrid practices. They are entangled with technological environments and conditions. Along the lines of actor-network-theory, both human and non-human actors are understood as participants in any media practice.
The following three dimensions of networked visual communication were identified within that theoretical framework: The dimension of plasticity indicates how malleable a digital picture is. On the one hand, digital photos are ascribed the characteristic of referring to something that has been; at the same time, they might show imagined and maybe idealized versions of the self. Pictures have communicative properties that are different from, for example, language, as they tend to enhance reflexive, aesthetic examinations of appearance and embodiment. Digital pictorial practices therefore always move in between documentation and imagination.
The dimension of visibility allows to analyse how intimately or publicly practices of showing and sharing take place. Social-Media-Apps allow for the constitution and differentiation of spheres and forms of communication. This is strongly connected to the dimension of connectivity: Digital pictorial practices occur in different modes of communication, which range from reciprocal, two-way forms (e.g. WhatsApp and Snapchat) to more theatrical-presentative modes (e.g. Instagram and Facebook).
Ultimately, visual networked communication constitutes and sustains forms of mediatised sociality and therefore the social relations our existence is built upon.
Ausgangspunkt sind zwei empirische Fallbeispiele, Selfies eines 14jährigen Mädchens und einer 78jährigen Frau. Die Bilder kontrastieren einerseits maximal im Sinne des unterschiedlichen Alters ihrer Protagonistinnen, andererseits minimal im Sinne des gleichen Genres und der Gestaltung als Selfie in Grautönen. Es wird rekonstruiert, inwiefern in den Bildern durch ihre spezifische Gestaltung bildlich eine „Sinnkomplexität der Übergegensätzlichkeit“ (Imdahl 1996) zum Vorschein kommt. Beide Bilder zeigen Ambivalenzen, die sich auf die lebensphasenspezifischen körperlichen Veränderungsprozesse des Erwachsen-Werdens bzw. Alt-Werdens beziehen. Ebenfalls empirisch relevant für die Rekonstruktion der Bedeutungsaushandlung der Bilder werden die Kommentare, die sich direkt auf die Bilder beziehen.
Anhand eines weiteren Beispiels wird ausgelotet, wie Bedeutungen von Postings, Bildern, Links, etc. auf Social Media sichtbar kollaborativ ausgehandelt werden, wenn etwa Bildkommentare mehrere Frames und Deutungen unterschiedlicher Art setzen können, die sich verstärken, widersprechen oder auch nicht berühren. Digitale Medien und besonders Social-Media-Kommunikation forcieren diese mediale Logik und machen gleichzeitig die Prozessualität und Flüchtigkeit des Aushandelns sichtbar. Während Sinn und Bedeutungen immer schon sozial hergestellt wurden, werden im Kontext von Online-Kommunikation die Herstellungsprozesse sichtbarer – ikonische und mediale Logiken forcieren zusammen auf diese Weise eine digitale Ambivalenz.
Instagram, TikTok und Flickr sind nur einige soziale Plattformen, bei denen das Bild im Zentrum steht. Auch in weiteren Social-Media-Netzwerken oder in Messenger-Apps wie Facebook, Twitter oder WhatsApp, die ursprünglich nicht bildzentriert ausgerichtet waren, gewinnt die Bildkommunikation an Bedeutung. Die Beiträge im Sammelband Vernetzte Bilder. Visuelle Kommunikation in Sozialen Medien reflektieren diese zunehmend bildbasierte Kommunikation theoretisch und ordnen sie kritisch ein, stets unter Berücksichtigung der erforderlichen perspektivischen und methodischen Vielfalt.
Der Band gliedert sich in drei Themenschwerpunkte: 1. Visuelle Lebensentwürfe in Sozialen Medien, 2. Professionelle Bilder in Sozialen Medien und 3. Viralität, Mobilisierung, Skandalisierung, Überwachung: kritische Aspekte der Ubiquität von Bildern in Sozialen Medien und ihrer Erforschung. In jedem Kapitel werden die spezifischen Eigenschaften des Visuellen herausgearbeitet, zum Beispiel aus dem Feld der inszenierten, visuellen Biografie, der Konstruktion von Authentizität bei Micro-Influencern oder hinsichtlich viraler Bilder von politischen Protesten.
Bei jeglicher Annäherung an den Themenkomplex der visuellen Social-Media-Kommunikation ist es zentral, die medien- und plattformspezifischen Vorgaben, Produktionsbedingungen und Charakteristika zu berücksichtigen, da diese maßgeblich zur Ausgestaltung der dargestellten Bildwelten und den daraus entstehenden ästhetischen Darstellungsformen beitragen. Die Frage nach der spezifischen Plattform und ihren Auswirkungen auf das Visuelle wird deshalb in verschiedenen Beiträgen immer wieder aufgegriffen, insbesondere wird sie aber auch zur Analyse von visuellen Praktiken genutzt, die sich als explizit plattformübergreifend verstehen.