Name: Catalina Sánchez s3830050

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

 

How commerce took over Instagram and clash with its culture

 

Introduction

In this report I would give a response to the course prompt “How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”. Throughout the semester I did a project based research. I went through different types of research methods to answer the main question, covering the theory, previous practices and producing a creative work that would help me understand the context, investigate its exercise and draw conclusions connected to my own personal experience. I would particularly explain how commerce has affected Instagram’s perceived affordances, clashing with its community culture. 

First, I would define the fundamental concepts included in the research question, then I’ll describe the methods I used to do the investigation, my main deductions for answering the prompt, and finally, my overall conclusion of the study. 

Background

To respond to the prompt we’ve been analyzing the terms throughout the semester and learning their meaning in relation to the frame of the course. Affordances, as defined by Donald Norman, are the possible actions an object can endure, which includes it’s perceived and actual properties (Norman 1988). Instagram has many perceived affordances that vary between its users, but mainly, as it is stated on their website description, it allows to “capture, edit & share photos, videos & messages with friends & family”. 

New media came with more complex softwares, which affords networked platforms, like Instagram. Networked media, as I explained in week’s 3 blog post, supports the traffic of input between different websites thanks to their particular softwares, allowing and needing the ability of users to create and share their own content (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant & Kelly 2003). These elements are what affect the authoring, publishing and distributing of photos and videos on the Social media application.

Photos and videos used to undergo very different processes than they do now. As I mention on the assignment 2 reviewauthoring, the stage in which the content is created, publication, when the content is displayed to an audience, and distribution, when final content reaches a public, used to be three separated stages performed by different mediums. The software of the social media app allows the execution of the three procedures without leaving the platform. In addition to that, the new affordances of Instagram centred on businesses, has made the three stages focus on targeting a market audience rather than just creating personal pictures and videos to share with your close ones. 

Evidence

In the form of a blog post, I was able to record the investigation with a mixed writing style. The first research method consisted on analysing texts that allude to some key concepts that give context to the prompt, such as “software literacy”, “affordances”, “network” and “social media”, each one more specific than the previous one. This theoretical analysis had two different formats, casual blog posts and annotated bibliographies. The second method involved critiquing other practitioners works with the purpose of detecting the difference between analogue and networked photography and videography, finishing with an overall review of both practices, their differences and similarities and giving a definition to the terms “authoring” “publishing” and “distributing”. 

With the last research method, I posted one image and video post a week on Instagram, during a period of three weeks, and focused on good and bad design. The first week I tried to do the authoring, publishing and distribution using just the affordances the app presented. I encountered the first constraints; it didn’t have as many filters as I wanted for my photo and the video could only be recorded while holding a button. Lev Manovich referred to these issues by saying that one of the key aspects of the platform are the “strong constraints on image aesthetics” (Manovich 2016 pp.18). The second week I used an external application to author the photo and video and follow the advice of social media experts to publish and distribute the post. I defined a theme for my account and paid more attention to the use of hashtags. By the third week, I was able to see the results of taking advantage of the algorithm, increasing the reach of my posts. But one of my main findings is that I realized I was trying to imitate what I usually see on the app, like the video tutorials and the aesthetics of the photos.

Evaluation

  • Authoring 

Instagram, as part of the new media, functions thanks to its participatory quality. In the beginning, it was seen as a space in which you could share a little bit of your life to a close group of friends and family (Manovich 2016). However, with the popularity it reached, the platform incorporated a new set of affordances that allowed a swift incorporation of business to the app, like the “insight” feature. If pressure of uploading a good photo wasn’t enough, brands realize they could benefit from this culture and people also figure out they could gain profit from their account aesthetic.

The effects of the expansion of affordances in the app directly affected the way photos and videos were authored. The figure of the influencer was born, and with that, different visual styles that follow the same pattern “generating illusions of their Instagram experience through simulatable aesthetics” (Leaver 2020, p. 160). In the third week of posting my own content, I reflected on how, without realizing, I was trying to capture the object in a certain way and editing the same way I have seen on other Instagram influencer’s accounts, as if I was doing it for an audience. Overall, Instagram affordances were met with cultural constraints on its authoring process, defining what was “Instagram-worthy” and how it should look (Manovich, 2016)

  • Publishing 

The affordability of Instagram has affected its publication process. Since it is a networked platform, once you finish authoring the photo or video the app allows you to publish it immediately. As I notice analysing the work of analogue photographers and videographers, before new media, the publishing process was a very meticulous and expensive procedure, and only people with a superior knowledge in the topic could do it. Daniel Palmer stated that networked cameras were a huge change because you can take photos, see them on the device and  Instantly share them (Palmer 2014).

The social media app not only enables the user to upload visual content, but also to put a description, hashtags and location. The posts are “not isolated structures but appear in concert with other visual and text-based information” (Leaver 2020, pp.42). For commerce, this technology represented a marketing opportunity with less costs and a major reach, using the features to showcase their product or service. This type of use has translated to common people, who employ these affordances to display their content as a product, writing captions like they were selling something or putting hashtags that would make them gain more visibility. 

  • Distributing 

In networked media, the distribution of visual content is much easier than it was before. With analogue photography and videography, you probably had to have or appear in an art exhibition. The affordances of Instagram allows the process to take place on the web without needing a different physical medium to circulate the content, being able to share the same post within different platforms and online communities. This way, photos and videos became a distributing media “can be networked, shared, downloaded and re-used with ease” (Berry, T 2018, pp. 8). 

The mentioned aspects made a lot of people interested in how they could make profit out of the reach their accounts had. Companies realized consumers consider Instagram a friendly space, which promotes interactive communication. During the third assignment I follow the advice of Chris Do and Dominik DeCoco, two social media experts that try to understand the functioning of Instagram’s algorithms to benefit from the platform. By the third week, I realized how using certain hashtags and following a theme had increased the amount of likes and views I had (Do 2019) (DeCoco 2020). The affordances of the social media app has made distribution a much more complex process, but, at the same time, something that anyone could endure.

Conclusion

After going through different research methods, I was able to identify the ways in which Instagram’s affordances affected the way photos and videos were authored, published and distributed on the network, encouraging particular actions based on our own culture. However, I encountered shortcomings trying to identify the same aspects in other platforms, mainly because I didn’t focus on trying to understand their algorithms and softwares as much as I did with Instagram.

In a networked platform, the participation of the users is fundamental because they provide the input that constitute each software. The vision of networked media as an ideal space started to crumble when commerce entered the scene and clashed with the community culture, changing the perceived affordances of the app. However, this also reflected how people can talk back to the software and showcase its limitations, causing Instagram to be in constant evolution. From adding posts “insights” to eliminating the visibility of likes. 

References:

– Berry, TB 2018, ‘Videoblogging Before Youtube’, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, pp. 9-22.

– DeCoco, D 2020, How The Instagram Algorithm Works in 2020 – Full Training – Own the Instagram Algorithm, Youtube, 31 January, heyDominik, Vienna, viewed 15 May 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWfVwVAOIvA&t=1021s

– Do, C 2019, How To Get 10k Followers On Instagram Per Week, Youtube, 6 November, The Futur, Santa Monica, viewed 15 May 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89bF5Dzh_F4>

– Leaver, T, Highfield, T, Abidin, C 2020, ‘From the Instagram of Everything to Everything of Instagram’,  Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Digital Media and Society, Cambridge, United Kingdom, pp.150-165.

– Leaver, T, Highfield, T, Abidin, C, YP 2020, ‘Aesthetics’, in Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Digital Media and Society, Cambridge, United Kingdom. pp. 39-74.

– Lister, M, Dovey, J, Giddings, S, Grant, I & Kelly, K 2009, ‘New Media and New Technologies’, New Media: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, New York, pp.9-105

– Manovich, L. 2016, ‘Introduction: ‘Instagram Platform as a Medium’, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA., pp.9-18.

– Manovich, L. 2016, ‘Part 1: Casual Photos’, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA., pp. 24-57.

– Norman, D 1988, ‘Chapter one’, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York, pp. 1-13.

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