Ubiquitous Photography
Reading 1: Maria Bakardjieva & Georgia Gaden (2011) Web 2.0 Technologies of the Self. p. 400-413
Although no scholarly consensus exists on the issue, the claim that a substantive reconfiguration of the Internet has occurred in the beginning of the 2000s has settled firmly in public common sense. The label tentatively chosen for the new turn in the medium’s evolution is Web 2.0. The Internet has provided an area for social interaction and can be seen as a 'technology of the self'.
Foucault (1988) defines technologies of the self as a suite of technologies that:
permit individuals to affect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality. (p. 18)
permit individuals to affect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality. (p. 18)
'Technologies of the self' should not be conceptualised in isolation, as they are a member of a larger family of technologies including technologies of production, technologies of sign systems and technologies of power. These four types of technologies, Foucault (1988) maintains, “hardly ever function separately, but each plays a key part in the constitution of human beings and requires the individual’s specific modification through training and the acquisition of specific skills and attitudes.” (p. 401)
Another characteristic of the technologies of the self that stands out in Foucault’s discussion is their functioning as a conduit of the interaction between the self and a public of some sort.
Giddens (1991) characterises the dynamic interplay between agency and structure in the process of self constitution under the conditions of high modernity as follows: The reflexive project of the self “consists in the sustaining of coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives” and “takes place in the context of multiple choice as filtered through abstract systems” (p. 5). The more daily life involves a dialectical exchange between the local and the global, the more individuals are “forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options” (p. 5).
(p. 404)
Giddens (1991) characterises the dynamic interplay between agency and structure in the process of self constitution under the conditions of high modernity as follows: The reflexive project of the self “consists in the sustaining of coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives” and “takes place in the context of multiple choice as filtered through abstract systems” (p. 5). The more daily life involves a dialectical exchange between the local and the global, the more individuals are “forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options” (p. 5).
(p. 404)
Most certainly the technologies of previous eras centred on the family, the church, education and the workplace—on tradition, stable institutions and social welfare—would prove inadequate to the new project of the self.
Earlier media brought a stream of events and experiences from around the globe into the local setting of the subject who had to accept or appropriate the presented content. Giddens characterises “the intrusion of distance events into everyday consciousness” (p. 27) as one of the major features of mediated experience in modern times. The interactive nature of the Internet, in contrast, allows a movement that goes the other way round. From within her local setting, the individual can reach into globally distributed resources of information. It allows the elective mobilisation of distant symbolic resources into everyday consciousness and opens a space for dealing with diversity, contradiction and negotiation.(p. 404)
The Rise of the Popular Self
The fact that Web 2.0 technologies are centred on the self has been noticed and scorned by commentators as Foucault may well have predicted: “MySpace is about me, me, me, and look at me and look at me” (Fairfax Digital News 2007 cited in Livingstone 2008, p. 395). As heirs to Christian morality, we tend to see the preoccupation with the self as egoistic and narcissistic, something to discourage rather than foster (Foucault 1988).
(p. 405)
The fact that Web 2.0 technologies are centred on the self has been noticed and scorned by commentators as Foucault may well have predicted: “MySpace is about me, me, me, and look at me and look at me” (Fairfax Digital News 2007 cited in Livingstone 2008, p. 395). As heirs to Christian morality, we tend to see the preoccupation with the self as egoistic and narcissistic, something to discourage rather than foster (Foucault 1988).
(p. 405)
In an era of converging media and “convergence culture” (Jenkins 2006), Web 2.0 technologies of the self are tightly intertwined with technologies of sign systems such as the mass communication media, the cultural industries and the multi-sensory discourses they propagate. A study of MySpace profiles, for example, documents the function of this site as a stage for the performance of taste (Liu 2007).
This is an activity in which the self is being expressed in the terms of the semiotic systems of popular culture: music, film, television, clothing and so forth. The user interface of MySpace invokes directly the symbols of this culture: your favourite band, film, book, song. The self in MySpace is written not on a clean slate, but through a dropdown menu and a form-filling exercise inviting the individual to map him or herself out along the axes of cultural taste.
(p. 406)
Free labor is free in the sense that it is willingly exerted as an outburst of creative energy and self-actualisation. Its shape and substance are not predetermined and imposed by the factory process or managerial plan. It is unpaid labor, and yet is often valorised and channeled into the profit-making enterprise of a capitalist organisation.
(p. 407)
With the growth of Web 2.0, a researcher does not need to search for such examples in court proceedings or specialised publications. We live them everyday when we invest time, work and creativity to update our Facebook profile in the morning and hear on the evening news that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now the third richest person in the world.
(p. 407)
Free labor has flooded large sectors of the digital economy. The early experimentation with it has yielded triumphant (for now) business models. Many thousands of bloggers toil away on their computers in the hope that they will attract the number of hits large enough to recommend them as potentially profitable to a company or advertising agency. The self that comes out in these blogs gets appropriately moulded to fit into that project of mass attraction and eventual profitability. On social networking sites, users do not need to achieve star status to be profitable to the enterprise. By virtue of employing the technology even if in the least sophisticated way, they lend their profiles and their selves to data mining and network marketing.
(p. 407)
The technologies of the self have always contained the element of the other, often an authoritative other for that, whose advice and judgment has presided over the workings of the soul and has offered guidance in the care for the self. In this sense, technologies of the self are always imbued with power, but that power can have different sources and forms.
(p. 408)
As games and play are transformed into an increasingly rationalised set of activities involving huge populations for extended periods, they institutionalise a form of social order. The mass of spectator-players is now organised by the technology of the game much as markets organise consumers, state bureaucracies organise citizens, and production technology organises workers.
(Grimes and Feenberg 2009, p. 108)
(p. 409)
(Grimes and Feenberg 2009, p. 108)
(p. 409)
Social networking sites are a hermeneutic technology in the sense introduced by Ihde (1990) (see also Bakardjieva 2005), because they insert themselves between the actual world of friendship relations and the person who is an actor in that world. All of a sudden, the landscape of a continent previously experienced first hand in the course of a multitude of meetings, conversations, gift exchanges, joint activities, etc., is captured on a technical carrier.
(p. 410)
As users gain experience and expand their repertoire of practices, the intentional and increasingly skilful employment of Web 2.0 technologies comes to “informate” (Zuboff 1988) their care of the self. For Zuboff, to “informate” is the capacity of computers to “introduce an additional dimension of reflexivity,” to produce “a voice that symbolically renders events, objects and processes so that they become visible, knowable and shareable in a new way” (Zuboff 1988).
(p. 410-11)
Conclusion
The shine of novelty on the surface of Web 2.0 technologies should not conceal the fact that they are aligned with a sequence of technologies of the self, stemming from Antiquity and stretching into the future. The practices of care for the self originated in Ancient Greece have gone through a long series of twists and turns, but they can still be clearly recognised in the image of the personal blog and the SNS profile. The richly invocative Foucauldian concept of “technologies of the self” fits so neatly as a caption for these new phenomena simply because they are technologies, because they lie at the hands of the self and are intentionally employed by him or her in order to “affect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being” (Foucault 1988, p. 18).
(p. 411)
Reading 2: José Van Dijck (2010) Flickr and the Culture of connectivity: Sharing Views, Experiences, Memories. p. 1-15
José Van Dijck: Biography
José van Dijck is a Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam where she is currently the Dean of Humanities. Her research areas include media and science, (digital) media technologies, popularisation of science and medicine, and television and culture. She is the author of several books, including Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent. Debating the New Reproductive Technologies (New York University Press, 1995), ImagEnation. Popular Images of Genetics (New York University Press, 1998) and The Transparent Body. A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005). Her book Mediated Memories in the Digital Age, in which she theorises the relationship between media technologies and cultural memory, was published by Stanford University Press (2007). She is currently working on a book on social media platforms, titled The Culture of Connectivity.
Her e-mail address is: j.van.dijck@uva.nl.
Abstract
Photo sharing sites such as Flickr are commonly regarded either as spaces where communal views and experiences evolve as a result of picture exchange, or as visual archives where sharing pictures in the present naturally leads to a collective interpretation of the past. This article proposes regarding Flickr as a social media platform annex database that enables the construction of infinite connections. Platforms such as Flickr are firmly embedded in a culture of connectivity, a culture where the powerful structures of social networking sites are gradually penetrating the core of our daily routines and practices. What is often called ‘collective memory’ or ‘cultural heritage’ in relation to digital photo sharing sites is largely the result of data linked up by means of computer code and institutional protocols.
Introduction
‘Share your photos. Watch the world’ is the motto featured on Flickr, currently the world’s largest photo sharing website. While Flickr was initially regarded mostly as a photo repository, it has quickly grown into a social network site the value of which hinges on interaction, dynamic exchange and a constant stream of added pictures. As a social network, Flickr’s design allows users to upload photos by email, mobile phone or through the web, disseminate pictures through RSS or blogs, comment on postings, join groups, declare friends, click on favourite photos, and so on.
(p. 1)
Flickr’s motto suggests the website links single photographic contributions to a naturalised, common view of the world. Behind this appealing slogan lie three assumptions that I would like to take issue with: the notion that sharing photos leads to collective perspectives, experiences and memory. Individuals articulate their identities as social beings by uploading photographs to document their lives; they appear to become part of a social community through photographic exchanges and this, in turn, shapes how they watch the world. The platform invites users to contribute photos, comments and information that then translate into a collective view on past events – the world as it was or a cultural heritage collection.
(p. 2)
The idea of collective memory has become problematic in the age of digital networks (Hoskins, 2009). Hoskins introduces the terms ‘networked’ and ‘connective’ memory to account for the construction of a new kind of memory that mixes not only the individual and the collective, the private and the public, but also past and future past into a permanent stream of visual ‘present’.
(p. 2)
Culture of Connectivity – A culture where perspectives, expressions, experiences and productions are increasingly mediated by social media sites. The culture of connectivity manifests itself particularly through platforms such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook Twitter, and others.
(p. 2)
Flickr does not simply enable but actively constructs connections between perspectives, experiences and memories. The idea of ‘sharing’ presumes a conscious, human activity, whereas in the context of social media platforms it has become mostly an unconscious technological pursuit. What is often called ‘collective memory’ or ‘cultural heritage’ in relation to digital photo sharing sites is largely the result of visual data and metadata linked up by means of computer code and institutional protocols.
(p. 2)
The Connective Turn and the Culture of Connectivity
Recent theories re-examine the tight interlocking of memory and media, typically linking collective memory with mass media and individual memory with so-called ‘personal’ media. Since the emergence of digital platforms, memory is increasingly defined by networked computers, which are in turn deployed by institutions or companies who (professionally) manage memory practices.
(p. 3)
In a sociological sense of the term, collective memory means people experience a connection between what happens in general and how they are involved as individuals; in a historical or historiographical sense, it means that people somehow feel part of a communal past or ordering of that past (van Dijck, 2007: 10).
(p. 3)
Definitions of memory and experience are inextricably linked up with notions of place and time, notions that obviously affect our memories. As memories are increasingly mediated and thus constructed by networked technologies, the boundaries between present and past are no longer given, but they are the very stakes in debating what counts as memory.
(p. 4)
The culture of connectivity comprises networks of multiple dyadic and technological relations that define and redefine not only the nature of memory, but also the way our perspectives and experiences are formed.
(p. 4)
Flickr as a Platform for Connecting Views
According to Flickr’s motto, its function as a social media platform is to collect individual ‘views’ – quite literally, shots taken from one person’s camera – and to bring about shared perspectives or common viewpoints. Flickr assembles thousands of photos uploaded by individuals on its website by virtue of an interface design that visibly and invisibly channels user activities. Besides its many visible features, the site also has a number of features that belong to the realm of the ‘technological unconscious’ – features that are less easily recognised as socio-technical directives, but that are instrumental in Flickr’s ability to gather metadata on users’ preferences, theme choices or mode of interaction.
(p. 5)
Flickr’s free metadata are a bounty to data miners who are interested in classifying user preferences and affiliations, and in finding statistical correlations between patterns of use and visual content. Even if a Flickr user’s profile remains private, links to groups and group affiliation are visible to the public, because Flickr does not allow users to hide their group memberships (Zheleva and Getoor, 2009). Flickr’s metadata and statistical analyses are not simply meant to track users’ preferences, but this information may be used in turn to stimulate users into engaging in particular group behaviour or group formation. By analysing metadata, commercial and government organisations can take advantage of a social network such as Flickr to distillate and predict user characteristics.
(p. 5)
Platforms such as Flickr are mainly facilitators for human interaction. However, the exclusive emphasis on human interaction and collaboration eclipses the role of automated algorithms in the production of social norms (whether aesthetic, ethical or intellectual) by systems such as Flickr. People spend energy on managing and cultivating their social networks online, and in doing so, they unconsciously release profiling information on what they like, whom they relate to and for what purposes.
(p. 6)
Thousands of people consciously upload pictures to social media platforms and link up to others, hence feeding the ‘technological unconscious’.
Huang and Hsu (2006) conclude: ‘The digital imaging revolution has not only changed our personal experience in photography but also offered a new perspective on our social life.’ In other words, by tracking shared information between people, events, activity, expressed interests and locations in time, patterns of social interaction are not merely reconstructions but active constructions of social behaviour shaped by the ‘technological unconscious’.
(p. 6)
Flickr as Connective Experience
‘Flickr is an amazing community with sharing at its heart’, as the homepage of this site puts it in self-affirmative terms (see Flickr, n.d. d). This secondary motto refers to the supposed function of Flickr as a platform for shared experience and community building – two activities that go hand in hand. The motto conjures up images of active communities who upload, download and comment on pictures and, by doing so, turn their activity into a collective experience.
(p. 7)
The comment function is an important aspect of developing community bonds, particularly in building a shared aesthetic judgment; by exchanging photos and comments, Flickr’s functionality as a communication device facilitates the construction of narratives about our selves. As Murray (2008: 149) concludes ‘Flickr has become a collaborative experience: a shared display of memory, taste, history, signifiers of identity, collection, daily life and judgment.’ Murray, like most researchers, presumes the primacy of human collaboration and collective experience and pays scant attention to the mechanical forces that steer connections in digital photo sites.
(p. 8)
Flickr as Connective Memory
Ever since Flickr’s popularity as a photo sharing website exploded in 2006, its function as a picture repository as well as a site for community building has not gone unnoticed by so-called ‘memory institutions’: archives, libraries and museums. The major role of memory institutions is to ‘link the past with the present’ and to ‘interpret and contextualise cultural heritage for it to become meaningful to people in their present lives’ (Manzuch, 2009: 3).
(p. 9)
Newsworthiness turns out to be an important functionality of Flickr, promoted in close relation to its self-acclaimed function as a platform for shared experience. The emphasis on recent events has led to the claim that many users ‘watch the world’ through the eyes of amateur photo journalists who upload their pictures just seconds after they witness an event. Flickr has become a significant forum for eyewitness photography, especially in times of disaster. Groups are created purposefully in response to natural disasters, such as wildfires, hurricanes and earthquakes, or political news events, such as metro bombings or plane hijackings. In their content analysis of disaster-specific Flickr groups, for instance those devoted to the London Transport bombings in 2005 and to the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, Liu et al. (2008) found that amateur photography is becoming a documentary practice and that Flickr has become a significant podium for amateur photographers to reach a wider public.
(p. 10)
In sum, the adjective ‘connective’ rather than ‘collective’ much better describes the memory function of photo sharing sites. It is not just the images that configure a communal view of the past, but the connective work performed on the basis of uploaded data. Historians should be careful to conceptualise digital platforms such as Flickr as archives, because their deployment and interpretation is ultimately contingent upon the connective quality of its mediators, whether human or nonhuman. In the culture of connectivity, photo sharing sites are practices of memory mediated by social and technical protocols (Bowker, 2008; Galloway, 2004).
(p. 11)
Conclusion
Photo sharing sites tend to be presented either as spaces where communal perspectives and experiences evolve as a result of picture exchange, or as visual archives where the exchange of pictures, experiences and interpretations in the present naturally lead to a communal sense of the past. Photo sharing sites such as Flickr are neither photo exchange sites nor archives, but rather social media platforms based on databases that enable the construction of infinite connections. These platforms are firmly embedded in a culture of connectivity, a culture where the algorithms of social networking sites are gradually penetrating the core of our daily routines and practices, such as sharing photos or exchanging stories about the past.
(p. 12)
Photo sharing sites are first and foremost nodes of information and people, where pictures and data are intentionally and mechanically provided; these data are mined to reveal patterns of social exchange, patterns that may in turn be reconnected to information systems that are firmly embedded in institutional practices.
(p. 12)
What is troublesome in the many superlatives promoting the use of Flickr as a unique platform for sharing experiences and collective memory is their undue emphasis on human interaction – especially the contributions of thousands of anonymous users – and their virtual ignorance of the connective construction work performed by institutional, professional and technological agents. Grounding Flickr’s functionalities almost entirely in motives of human collectivity seriously hampers a critical understanding of how and for what purpose connections between people and ideas are actively constructed. As it turns out, there is a meaningful gap between the two sentences comprising Flickr’s motto. It is precisely the fissure between ‘share your pictures’ and ‘watch the world’ that makes you wonder what connects these two imperatives.
(p. 13)
José van Dijck is a Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam where she is currently the Dean of Humanities. Her research areas include media and science, (digital) media technologies, popularisation of science and medicine, and television and culture. She is the author of several books, including Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent. Debating the New Reproductive Technologies (New York University Press, 1995), ImagEnation. Popular Images of Genetics (New York University Press, 1998) and The Transparent Body. A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005). Her book Mediated Memories in the Digital Age, in which she theorises the relationship between media technologies and cultural memory, was published by Stanford University Press (2007). She is currently working on a book on social media platforms, titled The Culture of Connectivity.
Her e-mail address is: j.van.dijck@uva.nl.
Abstract
Photo sharing sites such as Flickr are commonly regarded either as spaces where communal views and experiences evolve as a result of picture exchange, or as visual archives where sharing pictures in the present naturally leads to a collective interpretation of the past. This article proposes regarding Flickr as a social media platform annex database that enables the construction of infinite connections. Platforms such as Flickr are firmly embedded in a culture of connectivity, a culture where the powerful structures of social networking sites are gradually penetrating the core of our daily routines and practices. What is often called ‘collective memory’ or ‘cultural heritage’ in relation to digital photo sharing sites is largely the result of data linked up by means of computer code and institutional protocols.
Introduction
‘Share your photos. Watch the world’ is the motto featured on Flickr, currently the world’s largest photo sharing website. While Flickr was initially regarded mostly as a photo repository, it has quickly grown into a social network site the value of which hinges on interaction, dynamic exchange and a constant stream of added pictures. As a social network, Flickr’s design allows users to upload photos by email, mobile phone or through the web, disseminate pictures through RSS or blogs, comment on postings, join groups, declare friends, click on favourite photos, and so on.
(p. 1)
Flickr’s motto suggests the website links single photographic contributions to a naturalised, common view of the world. Behind this appealing slogan lie three assumptions that I would like to take issue with: the notion that sharing photos leads to collective perspectives, experiences and memory. Individuals articulate their identities as social beings by uploading photographs to document their lives; they appear to become part of a social community through photographic exchanges and this, in turn, shapes how they watch the world. The platform invites users to contribute photos, comments and information that then translate into a collective view on past events – the world as it was or a cultural heritage collection.
(p. 2)
The idea of collective memory has become problematic in the age of digital networks (Hoskins, 2009). Hoskins introduces the terms ‘networked’ and ‘connective’ memory to account for the construction of a new kind of memory that mixes not only the individual and the collective, the private and the public, but also past and future past into a permanent stream of visual ‘present’.
(p. 2)
Culture of Connectivity – A culture where perspectives, expressions, experiences and productions are increasingly mediated by social media sites. The culture of connectivity manifests itself particularly through platforms such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook Twitter, and others.
(p. 2)
Flickr does not simply enable but actively constructs connections between perspectives, experiences and memories. The idea of ‘sharing’ presumes a conscious, human activity, whereas in the context of social media platforms it has become mostly an unconscious technological pursuit. What is often called ‘collective memory’ or ‘cultural heritage’ in relation to digital photo sharing sites is largely the result of visual data and metadata linked up by means of computer code and institutional protocols.
(p. 2)
The Connective Turn and the Culture of Connectivity
Recent theories re-examine the tight interlocking of memory and media, typically linking collective memory with mass media and individual memory with so-called ‘personal’ media. Since the emergence of digital platforms, memory is increasingly defined by networked computers, which are in turn deployed by institutions or companies who (professionally) manage memory practices.
(p. 3)
In a sociological sense of the term, collective memory means people experience a connection between what happens in general and how they are involved as individuals; in a historical or historiographical sense, it means that people somehow feel part of a communal past or ordering of that past (van Dijck, 2007: 10).
(p. 3)
Definitions of memory and experience are inextricably linked up with notions of place and time, notions that obviously affect our memories. As memories are increasingly mediated and thus constructed by networked technologies, the boundaries between present and past are no longer given, but they are the very stakes in debating what counts as memory.
(p. 4)
The culture of connectivity comprises networks of multiple dyadic and technological relations that define and redefine not only the nature of memory, but also the way our perspectives and experiences are formed.
(p. 4)
Flickr as a Platform for Connecting Views
According to Flickr’s motto, its function as a social media platform is to collect individual ‘views’ – quite literally, shots taken from one person’s camera – and to bring about shared perspectives or common viewpoints. Flickr assembles thousands of photos uploaded by individuals on its website by virtue of an interface design that visibly and invisibly channels user activities. Besides its many visible features, the site also has a number of features that belong to the realm of the ‘technological unconscious’ – features that are less easily recognised as socio-technical directives, but that are instrumental in Flickr’s ability to gather metadata on users’ preferences, theme choices or mode of interaction.
(p. 5)
Flickr’s free metadata are a bounty to data miners who are interested in classifying user preferences and affiliations, and in finding statistical correlations between patterns of use and visual content. Even if a Flickr user’s profile remains private, links to groups and group affiliation are visible to the public, because Flickr does not allow users to hide their group memberships (Zheleva and Getoor, 2009). Flickr’s metadata and statistical analyses are not simply meant to track users’ preferences, but this information may be used in turn to stimulate users into engaging in particular group behaviour or group formation. By analysing metadata, commercial and government organisations can take advantage of a social network such as Flickr to distillate and predict user characteristics.
(p. 5)
Platforms such as Flickr are mainly facilitators for human interaction. However, the exclusive emphasis on human interaction and collaboration eclipses the role of automated algorithms in the production of social norms (whether aesthetic, ethical or intellectual) by systems such as Flickr. People spend energy on managing and cultivating their social networks online, and in doing so, they unconsciously release profiling information on what they like, whom they relate to and for what purposes.
(p. 6)
Thousands of people consciously upload pictures to social media platforms and link up to others, hence feeding the ‘technological unconscious’.
Huang and Hsu (2006) conclude: ‘The digital imaging revolution has not only changed our personal experience in photography but also offered a new perspective on our social life.’ In other words, by tracking shared information between people, events, activity, expressed interests and locations in time, patterns of social interaction are not merely reconstructions but active constructions of social behaviour shaped by the ‘technological unconscious’.
(p. 6)
Flickr as Connective Experience
‘Flickr is an amazing community with sharing at its heart’, as the homepage of this site puts it in self-affirmative terms (see Flickr, n.d. d). This secondary motto refers to the supposed function of Flickr as a platform for shared experience and community building – two activities that go hand in hand. The motto conjures up images of active communities who upload, download and comment on pictures and, by doing so, turn their activity into a collective experience.
(p. 7)
The comment function is an important aspect of developing community bonds, particularly in building a shared aesthetic judgment; by exchanging photos and comments, Flickr’s functionality as a communication device facilitates the construction of narratives about our selves. As Murray (2008: 149) concludes ‘Flickr has become a collaborative experience: a shared display of memory, taste, history, signifiers of identity, collection, daily life and judgment.’ Murray, like most researchers, presumes the primacy of human collaboration and collective experience and pays scant attention to the mechanical forces that steer connections in digital photo sites.
(p. 8)
Flickr as Connective Memory
Ever since Flickr’s popularity as a photo sharing website exploded in 2006, its function as a picture repository as well as a site for community building has not gone unnoticed by so-called ‘memory institutions’: archives, libraries and museums. The major role of memory institutions is to ‘link the past with the present’ and to ‘interpret and contextualise cultural heritage for it to become meaningful to people in their present lives’ (Manzuch, 2009: 3).
(p. 9)
Newsworthiness turns out to be an important functionality of Flickr, promoted in close relation to its self-acclaimed function as a platform for shared experience. The emphasis on recent events has led to the claim that many users ‘watch the world’ through the eyes of amateur photo journalists who upload their pictures just seconds after they witness an event. Flickr has become a significant forum for eyewitness photography, especially in times of disaster. Groups are created purposefully in response to natural disasters, such as wildfires, hurricanes and earthquakes, or political news events, such as metro bombings or plane hijackings. In their content analysis of disaster-specific Flickr groups, for instance those devoted to the London Transport bombings in 2005 and to the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, Liu et al. (2008) found that amateur photography is becoming a documentary practice and that Flickr has become a significant podium for amateur photographers to reach a wider public.
(p. 10)
In sum, the adjective ‘connective’ rather than ‘collective’ much better describes the memory function of photo sharing sites. It is not just the images that configure a communal view of the past, but the connective work performed on the basis of uploaded data. Historians should be careful to conceptualise digital platforms such as Flickr as archives, because their deployment and interpretation is ultimately contingent upon the connective quality of its mediators, whether human or nonhuman. In the culture of connectivity, photo sharing sites are practices of memory mediated by social and technical protocols (Bowker, 2008; Galloway, 2004).
(p. 11)
Conclusion
Photo sharing sites tend to be presented either as spaces where communal perspectives and experiences evolve as a result of picture exchange, or as visual archives where the exchange of pictures, experiences and interpretations in the present naturally lead to a communal sense of the past. Photo sharing sites such as Flickr are neither photo exchange sites nor archives, but rather social media platforms based on databases that enable the construction of infinite connections. These platforms are firmly embedded in a culture of connectivity, a culture where the algorithms of social networking sites are gradually penetrating the core of our daily routines and practices, such as sharing photos or exchanging stories about the past.
(p. 12)
Photo sharing sites are first and foremost nodes of information and people, where pictures and data are intentionally and mechanically provided; these data are mined to reveal patterns of social exchange, patterns that may in turn be reconnected to information systems that are firmly embedded in institutional practices.
(p. 12)
What is troublesome in the many superlatives promoting the use of Flickr as a unique platform for sharing experiences and collective memory is their undue emphasis on human interaction – especially the contributions of thousands of anonymous users – and their virtual ignorance of the connective construction work performed by institutional, professional and technological agents. Grounding Flickr’s functionalities almost entirely in motives of human collectivity seriously hampers a critical understanding of how and for what purpose connections between people and ideas are actively constructed. As it turns out, there is a meaningful gap between the two sentences comprising Flickr’s motto. It is precisely the fissure between ‘share your pictures’ and ‘watch the world’ that makes you wonder what connects these two imperatives.
(p. 13)
No comments:
Post a Comment