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.