Name: Shaun Rimes s3530111

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 9 – Instagram photo
Week 9 – Instagram video
Week 10 – Instagram photo
Week 10 – Instagram video
Week 11 – Instagram photo
Week 11 – Instagram video

This report responds directly to the course prompt:

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

Introduction :

Instagram is a platform which allows users to author, publish and distribute content with relative ease. The process of engaging with Instagram is impacted by the hardware on which it is used, for example the phone or device. The affordances of the platform are subject to the users access to, and proficiency with additional software. Further, the prolific nature of technology within our culture makes Instagram a commonly used platform to share the experience of the user through a visual medium. Instagram is a visual platform with affordances primarily focused on visual media like images and videos. This paper will focus on the cultural implications of Instagram as a platform and will discuss how the affordances of instagram are contextualised by, and perpetuate a cultural attitude which lionises individualism, branding and ultimately capitalism.

Background:

Affordances are an object’s properties which communicate to the user how the object is intended to be interacted with and further, the purpose of the object itself (Norman, 1998). The nature of affordances both encourages and constrains users in the way that they interact with the platform. Instagram has a range of affordances which encourage the user to interact with the platform with a particular mindset. The content primarily published and distributed on Instagram is imagery. Captions can be added to imagery however this is not Instagram’s primary modality. The visual nature of content uploaded to instagram has given rise to a cultural phenomenon of “peak Instagram aesthetic” (Leaver et al, 2020) and of Instagram influencers who both market products and become commodities themselves, often kickstarting careers in modelling or acting by gaining popularity using the affordances Instagram offers for the distribution of content. This kind of commodification and branding, advertising potential and capacity for marketing to reach such divers audience has both cultural and economic implications for both individuals and for society more broadly.

Evidence:

‘Good design is hard to notice’ (Norman 1998) and I found this to be particularly true so I decided to focus on designs where the design itself clearly defines its intended purpose and draw a comparison to those that are not. I chose to engage with the design of objects in space in order to produce content which I believe has self evident artistic and aesthetic value. The content which I produced and published lacks an obvious popular cultural context and I was less enthusiastic about the affordances which facilitate distribution. I had not engaged with Instagram before this assignment and I couldn’t be less interested in influencer culture because personally I think its a little gauche and distasteful. Affordances like hashtags and geo-tags etc are designed to distribute content and engage other users however I felt far more interested in the more production focused affordances like the camera. I found the affordances limiting for the purpose of publishing media. The square form format constrains the user to a particular aesthetic of camera work and leaves the creative element of producing content to the manipulation of the environment itself. This speaks to the phenomenon of the Instagram aesthetic and Leaver et al postulates that the cultural impact of instagram has had a material impact on the physical design of spaces in order to optimise the peak instagram aesthetic.

Evaluation:

Authoring – the affordances provided by instagram relating to authoring and editing images and video are fairly basic. The in-app camera allows users to produce and distribute images however the capacity to edit images is limited. They give users some scope for creative potential however that scope is limited.  This encourages the user to manipulate the environment in order to create the aesthetic they are looking to cultivate and distribute. This is ultimately a product based approach rather than a themed based approach to content which speaks to the mindset and culture which is propagated by Instagram as a platform. Media platforms are a product of the culture in which they arise but they also influence the culture itself and this is particularly evident with Instagram.

Publishing – The simplicity of publishing content on social media has arguably redefined the nature of social interaction and community engagement itself. (Lister et al, 2009) Instagram specifically produces very image focused content and this raises questions about manufactured authenticity. The intersection between developing social capital by manufacturing a brand or aesthetic and the methods which one uses to author and publish content is where the conflicts between reality and what is being presented as reality is most pronounced. The immediacy and simplicity of taking and uploading a photo gives the impression to users that content is authentic, captured in the moment. (Palmer, 2014) The reality however is that most content is heavily manufactured.  There are services available which allow people to create totally fabricated content to distribute on instagram, for example extravagant private jets which never take off that influencers use like sets to take selfies.

Distribution – The affordances of instagram have been heavily influenced by capitalist and market logic. They encourage and perpetuate a neoliberal and individualist mindset which contextualises the human being as a brand and allows users to turn social capital into financial capital. The nature of cross marketing combined with affordances that allow users to distribute the images which they create and publish is ultimately informed by the desire to develop social capital (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013). A platforms affordances speak to an expectation of a user’s capacity and technical limitations (Gaver, 1991). The instagram culture allows models and influencer’s to monetise this social capital using sponsorship by taking photos of products and posing them to the platform.

Conclusion:

Instagram as platform has changed the way the average person engages with visual media. It has a particular focus on the manufacturing of authenticity and the affordances of instagram encourage the use of market logic to cultivate an aesthetic and connect and distribute content using a demographic or marketed style of distribution. While Instagram arguably encourages creativity and allows people to connect along lines of interests and values, the development of social capital and the potential to monetise based on the content which is distributed has implications for our culture as a whole. Instagram culture has impacted the way we understand aesthetic and has implications for the very design of material objects in order to optimise it’s marketability on Instagram.

References:

Gaver, B 1991, Technology Affordances, Proceeding CHI ’91 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp 79-84.

Hinton, S & Hjorth L 2013, Understanding Social Media. Sage Publications, London, UK, pp. 1-31.

Leaver, T., Highfield, T., Abidin, C., 2020. Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Digital Media and Society, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 1-38

Lister, M et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, New York, USA, pp. 16-21

Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things , Basic Book, New York, USA, Preface vii-xv; Chapter one pp 1-13; Chapter four 81-87; 177-186.

Palmer, D 2014, Mobile Media Photography, in The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, (eds) Goggin G., Hjorth L., Routledge, New York, USA, pp. 249–255.

1. How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

This photo of a microwave is an example of bad design, the functions are complex and are rarely used to the full extent of the designers intent, more often than not they are just used to quickly heat or defrost items, I myself tend to only use mine for this purpose when there are a multitude of other setting including a convection oven setting which I have no idea how to use.

I shot this photo using the rear camera of my iPhone 7 using the Instagram app to capture it. I used my hands to position the camera and was lit with warm overhead lighting and two cool tone fluorescent work lights to add reflections on the aluminium surface, because of the additional light sources I used there was no need for me to use the inbuilt flash. I believe the square frame format was a bit of a hindrance in this instance as in order to fit the microwave in shot it forced my to capture unnecessary cabinetry that houses it above and below, being able to shoot in landscape would have rectified this. I made a number of alteration during the editing process before publishing, I first applied the filter Reyes which seemed to soften the light, there was also a reflection of me taking the photo in the glass so to remove this I lowered the brightness, Raised the contrast, raised the warmth, slightly raised the saturation and reduced the shadow level. I also applied a tilt shift which slightly blurred the top and bottom sections of the photo reinforcing the focus on microwave and not the cabinetry surrounding it.

This time round I really experimented with the different manipulation options available within the Instagram app. undoubtedly using a professional camera and editing software such as photoshop is going to produce better results, however I really do think now that the capabilities within the Instagram app are on par with what my iPhone can do, aside from the frame format.

1. How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

I took about 4 shots before I was satisfied and the reason for this is because I was holding the phone in my hand and wanted to ensure that I got the lines of the cabinetry as evenly spaced with the frame as possible. I decided not to geo-tag this post and I made that decision simply due to the fact that in all my previous posts I had done so and want to experiment and just see what it would be like without it, I did however incorporate a caption describing the image which had a number of hashtags embedded into it.

1. How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?

During the process of publishing I again as I have done previously linked this post to both Twitter and Tumbler and I was able to do this by activating the switches next to the corresponding accounts. I would have really liked to have had one of these linked to Facebook however I believe there is a more technical issue impeding me from being able to do this at this stage.

1. How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

I chose to video this Rubik’s Cube as an example of a good design because its functions exactly as it was intended to do. It is a puzzle that is not easy to solve and has been able to baffle people for decades which is directly in line with what the designers intent was.

To capture this video I used my iPhone 7 however I did not use the inbuilt record function of the Instagram app, the reason for this is that I needed to have both my hands free in order to interact with the object and this would not have been possible had I recorded it within the app as it requires the button to be held down constantly while recording, so I recorded it using my phones record function and then uploaded that video. Additionally I had my phone mounted on a selfie stick that doubles as a tripod in order to give it stability. The square format worked well for this video as it framed the object well and allowed enough space for me to interact with it. I did not utilise the inbuilt flash though the object was lit from above using LED lighting strips and edited by applying the Lo-Fi filter which seemed to make the colours stand out just that little bit more.

As I’ve stated previously apart from the filters and the ability to cut the footage which I did not do in this instance, Instagram does not have any other options for editing or manipulating video footage, you have a great deal more options available to you within the iPhone but I chose not to alter the footage until i got within the Instagram app.

1. How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

I had a bit of difficulty positioning the tripod in the correct spot and positioning of my hands in order to not cast unnecessary shadows and I took 3 takes before I completely happy. This post was geo-tagged with the location where it was shot and includes a caption describing the object and have a number of hashtags within it.

1. How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?

I was again not able to link this post to Facebook however it is linked to both Twitter and Tumbler and this was done by activating the switches next to the corresponding accounts.

1. How did you author (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

This photo is a prime example of a bad design. Remote controls since their invention have caused users frustration and confusion, they rely on a level of assumed knowledge by the consumer and can be incredibly difficult to navigate if you don’t have that knowledge.

The photo was taken using the camera on my iPhone 7 whilst holding it in my hand, it was a fairly straightforward shot and was able to capture what I intended on my first attempt. Im of two minds when it comes to efficacy of the square format in relation to this photo, if I was able to use a vertical landscape format I could have gone in closer on the remote and shown more detail however on the other hand I don’t particularly think you need more detail and the way the square format frames it draws the audience’s eye in. I did not use the built in flash however the remote was lit from above using LED lighting strips and during the publishing process I applied the Juno filter which gave it a bit of warmth and a slight amount of vignetting further drawing the focus into the centre, additionally I altered the structure and saturation slightly to highlight the details of the photo more.

Whilst authoring this photo I was able to investigate further the different functions and manipulation options within Instagram, whilst it is no Photoshop I did see a lot of tools that I previously weren’t aware were available which has swayed my previous position somewhat. It still doesn’t have quite as many options as the iPhone has but the ones that are missing I don’t feel are of great importance, the square frame format though I still feel is very limiting.

1. How did you publish (the photo or video) you recorded for upload to Instagram?

As I stated previously this was a fairly straightforward shot that required very little preparation and I achieved the desired result on the first attempt. as I have done with all of the previous posts I geo-tagged where it was taken and wrote a description of what was contained in the image and added several hashtags that relate to the image.

1. How did you distribute (the photo or video) you published on Instagram to other social media services?

This is an area that I seem to have the greatest difficulty with. Like my previous video post I attempted to link it to Facebook however for some reason it won’t allow me, it doesn’t come up with an error message or anything even remotely like that it simply will not come up as an option even when I switch the toggle to authorise the link with Facebook, therefore, as I have done previously this Instagram post has also been linked and distributed to Twitter and Tumbler.