This blog page provides support material for submitting Assignment 3: https://www.mediafactory.org.au/stephanie-george/
Assignment 3 – Report
Name: Stephanie George – s3724104
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 do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?
Title of report: How Instagram can establish your online identity
Introduction:
By focusing on the Instagram application for much of this course, I am able to see that Instagram has many affordances and constraints that a user comes in contact with. Owning an Instagram (specifically for showcasing doors) allowed us to create content through the app and deepen our understanding of Instagram. The start of this course helped us to understand exactly what ‘affordances’ and ‘constraints’ are as we thoroughly explored these concepts through D.Norman’s ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ and W.Gavers ‘Technology Affordances’.
Social media for me started with Myspace in my last year of primary school. A space where I fiddled with html codes to create a page on the internet and share photo albums (these albums often taking what seemed hours to upload). Myspace is now dead and I don’t see it coming back into action any time soon. Instagram on the other hand, has seemed to cater to its audience almost perfectly and is something that is constantly improving. I have been sharing moments from my personal life on Instagram since 2012. Instagram allows its users to easily author, publish and distribute images and videos on a network or furthermore, our own unique network. My report focuses on how the affordances and limitations of Instagram help to create an online identity.
Background:
Week 1 in the course lead us to ‘Blogs in Media Communication’ by Adrian Miles. We learned that although blogging and Instagram are different – they also share similarities. Blogging (including blogging via Instagram) involves users contributing to a community. In my week 2 blog post, I mention how the “media we consume is progressing into something more personable”. During the following weeks, I then started thinking about how the media we author and publish actually shapes out “online persona” and creates a community for us. (Miles, 2006 p69). In order to explore this further, it was imperative that I understood the ins and outs of the prompt. In his book, Norman says that affordances are “the perceived and actual properties of the thing, mainly those fundamental properties that determine how the thing could possibly be used” (Norman, 1998, page 9). Along with affordances come ‘constraints’ – that can be “physical, logical and cultural” (1998, pg9). When I think about Instagram and what it allows me and other users to do – I think about its features such as video time limits, capturing a photo in a square format, image filters and the ability to share it to other platforms via the app itself. A benefit of Instagram is its simplicity and I believe that it is because of this that could be seen as the leading application and network contributor.
Evidence/What?:
I investigated the prompt by referring to the set readings, class discussions and my own further research. This helped me create content for my Instagram account, ‘Steph Snaps Doors’.
Authoring
In my week 1 blog post – I spoke about my previous experience with blogging and social media, and how it can be used to share moments with friends. As Zylinkska says, “we are all photographers now” (Zylinkska,2016). The Instagram camera feature allows anyone to capture images or videos as long as they know the basic features of their smartphone. Even image editing and enhancement can be performed through the app – which is something that once was only able to be done through more complex programs such as photoshop. Instagram was originally designed solely for images that were to be uploaded at that exact time. However, as the app developed since it was released in 2010, it allows users to share content that has previously been taken (perhaps not on a smartphone camera). Thus, drastically changing the way the content is authored. Staying within the assessment guidelines, I discovered that whilst having a camera within the Instagram app is an affordance – it is also a limitation. The quality of the image is far less on my Instagram compared to one such as Chris Burkard – who I reviewed here. Starting out as strictly a image sharing app, Instagram slowly introduced video into its platform. The length of videos being able to be uploaded as gradually extended – however these videos are short compared to video sharing sites such as YouTube.
Publishing
Although creating captions may be seen as part of the authoring process – I found myself doing this in the publishing stage. This semester has shown me how the affordances of Instagram specifically can be a tool for both individual brand creation and businesses. The use of hashtags became important in my own posts. My first post had 1 or 2 hashtags and gained little traction from Instagram. However – when I added hashtags relating to all aspects of the post (such as #Melbourne #architecture) – I gained more “likes”. Although I had previously understood the use of hashtags – I had never really used them in my own posts with the intention of widening my audience. The time of publishing a post is something that I have been aware of in the past and therefore I applied this to my door focused Instagram. Unfortunately – this did nothing to my following (which still remains at 0). I do see however that hashtags can contribute to your own Instagram identity and if unique enough – can furthermore help define your brand.
Distribution
The main way I distributed my content was through the use of hashtags on Instagram. Users who search for ‘doors’ on the Instagram explore feature may have come across my door or perhaps if they have searched for a particular location. The ability for users to find such niche content is an affordance of Instagram and very beneficial for both those generating and in search of content. A limitation of using hashtags, however, is that they appear in ‘recent’ (chronological order) or ‘top’ (popular). So if someone is searching for something that is quite popular, such as #beach – they may have to scroll through 225 million photos to find what they are looking for. Instagram also offers its users to distribute content onto external social platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.
Evaluation
Looking back at Web 2.0 and the social media platforms that have stemmed from this – it is clear that Instagram is the most successful. They have found a simple way for users to share moments and content for various intentions – whether that be personal or professional.
Conclusion:
The affordances of Instagram are constantly changing, allowing more content to be authored, published and distributed. Instagram still favors images over video, with top quality images being able to be uploaded and rarely any limitations. There are still limitations with regards to video upload. Not only does the authoring of Instagram images construct personal identity, but the publishing and distribution also strengthen this.
References:
Gaver, B 1991, ‘Technology Affordances’, Proceeding CHI ’91 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp 79-84.
Kamila K & Zylinska J, editors. Photomediations: An Introduction by Joanna Zylinkska. Open Humanities Press, 2016, viewed 2 February 2018, http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/ titles/photomediations/, pp.7-16.
Miles, Adrian. “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.” Australian Screen Ed 41 (2006): 66–9. Print. [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018]
Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter one 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) 81-87; (computers) 177-186).