Images on Social Media, Their Producers and Viewers (original) (raw)

Image Testimonies: Witnessing in Times of Social Media (Introduction)

Image Testimonies. Witnessing in Times of Social Media. Ed. by Kerstin Schankweiler, Verena Straub & Tobias Wendl, 2019

This introduction sets the basis for the contributions in the volume by developing a concept of ‘image testimony’, which has yet to be fully theorized. It traces how visuality and vision, image, and imaging technology have shaped theories of witnessing from early on. Given the accelerated visual economy in the social web today, a new approach to theorizing image testimony has become necessary. In relation to contemporary image practices, the authors highlight the plurality of witnessing as well as the affectivity of image testimonies in order to shape a new approach to testimony theory. By bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives and the case studies discussed throughout the volume, the introduction provides a comprehensive overview of the core arguments, thus giving way to a multi-faceted understanding of image testimony as an emerging field of study.

Eye, Flesh, World - Three Modes of Digital Witnessing

Image Testimony: Witnessing in Times of Social Media. Edited by Schankweiler, K. and Straub, V. and Wendi, T. Published by Routledge, 2019: 121-135., 2019

Published in: Schankweiler, K. and Straub, V. and Wendi, T. (eds.) Image Testimony: Witnessing in Times of Social Media. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019: 121-135. Many analyses of image testimonies in social media begin and end with the same assumption: that while social media are new means for circulating witnessing texts, they rarely provide their content. What we witness via Facebook, Twitter etc. tends not to be Facebook, Twitter, etc. In contrast, this paper asks what we can learn from instances where image testimonies are not just distributed through digital platforms, but also foreground key aspects of the medium itself. Proceeding through the close-reading of three examples, it explores how social media reconfigure existing modes of witnessing – eye-witnessing, flesh-witnessing and world-witnessing - to reveal the underlying techno-cultural potentialities and vulnerabilities of our networked lives. The power of these image testimonies derives not only from the topics they convey (injustice, suffering, death), but from their poetic ability to constitute digital networks themselves as witnessable worlds, as new domains of embodied being.

Public mirror: legitimizing 'social' photography as a contemporary discipline

2018

With all the public information about any famous person, topic or event 'googleable' on the Internet, there seems to be nothing new for 'digital natives' to discover other than the elusive Self. The Self is the 'new frontier' and the smartphone camera is at the forefront of this quest, unearthing and exhibiting different kinds of content everyday. With over 95 million photographs and videos shared on Instagram daily; Photography has merged with social networking sites and applications (SNS/A) to become a recognisable phenomenon called-'Social' Photography. Despite its rich association with legitimate visual art-forms and numerous scholarly articles examining it's various forms-the term 'Social' Photography is unfamiliar to most. This inquiry discusses 'Social' Photography in relation to existing literature to argue for its establishment as a legitimate discipline within the Creative Arts. By acknowledging its subjectivity and utilization of digital technologies, this study employed an interpretive group of methods and identified six characteristics of 'Social' Photography-namely, (i) Activity, (ii) Participation, (iii) Identity, (iv) Glamour, (v) Protest, and (vi) Spectacle-that exemplify its capacity to curate a meaningful democratic public image. These six aspects can be used to categorize and formalize individual behaviour that can be analysed and interpreted to foster a better understanding of 'Social' Photography as a discipline.

Selfies| Selfies: Witnessing and Participatory Journalism with a Point of View

2015

Whereas a vast number of selfies contain little more than a face or faces, highlighting the presentation of self (Goffman, 1959), this article goes beyond the notion of self and identity by examining the relationship between the self and the geographical and social space around it. In particular, we examine a type of selfie that places the self in an event or location of interest such as a sporting event, tourist attraction, or even disaster area or war zone. We argue that the visual interaction between the person and the space can be considered a process of meaning making, resulting in a particular identity that is informed by both the space and the self, and presenting the photographer/subject as a witness. The relationship between space and self is not only a claim that “I’m here!” in a particular time and space but also a claim that “I witnessed this event,” which is elementary to any form of journalism. These selfies, we propose, can then be understood as journalism with a poin...

'On Social Photography' - Exploring the Postmodern Condition of Social Media Photography

This dissertation examines the postmodern condition of social media (SM) and evaluates the use of social photography, photography in SM, as a postmodern sensibility. For this, Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp (1964), and her critiques in On Photography (2008), will be applied to social photography. It will become apparent; that SM poses risks to individuals and that many of these problems can be traced back to the medium of photography. It will be argued, that the dynamics of photography have intensified and that social photographs visualize how through digitization; individuals, things, and numbers, equally become data-fied subject-objects in cyberspace, cybjects [cyber-(ob)ject-(su)bject], which are exposed to the scrutiny of the cyberspace panopticon (Foucault, 1980). Based on these theories, this dissertation will conclude that the use of SM for social practices and identity formation is innately problematic as the interpretation of one’s SM agency is beyond one’s control.

Visual Studies and the New Media

In this essay we argue that the benefits of social media's visuality is what became their major drive to be one of the greatest social phenomena in the 21st century. It also contains a discription of how a 'vlog' can be defined and which tendencies have occured in the New Media development. Key words: social media, vlog, visual studies, YouTube, communication, iconic turn

A theoretical overview of the language of visual sociology

Akdeniz Language Studies Conference, 2012

In this study, it is tried to make an evaluation, on a theoretical basis, of the content and meaning of visual sociology, the relationship between visual images and culture, the methodology of visual sociology, the functions of sociology and sociologists at visual assessment.