Identity Construction on Instagram

2015

The types of communicating vessel systems that form public and private "spheres" constitute a multifaceted, complex system that is connected to an almost intractable range of issues. The fact is that the facets of mobile technology – ubiquity, multimediality, multidirectionality – form a new context in which trends to renegotiate, defend, adapt or challenge notions of public and private are developed by individuals in their everyday lives and by social institutions through their rules and goals. This book, which brings together presentations from the conference "Public and Private in Mobile Communications", held in March 2015 at Beira Interior University, Portugal, particularly favors discussions on the uses that individuals make of mobile devices in their everyday practices. However, as a background issue, it also includes the sometimes implicit approach about the transformations that connect new technologies to certain cultural practices, forms of interaction and political uses. In fact, as happened in the past with other technological innovations, it is practically impossible to discuss the penetration of mobile devices and their social appropriations without the perspective of a historical side, even if it is "only" an epistemological background.

Twitter is used by a substantial minority of the populations of many countries to share short messages, sometimes including images. Nevertheless, despite some research into specific images, such as selfies, and a few news stories about specific tweeted photographs, little is known about the types of images that are routinely shared. In response, this article reports a content analysis of random samples of 800 images tweeted from the UK or USA during a week at the end of 2014. Although most images were photographs, a substantial minority were hybrid or layered image forms: phone screenshots, collages, captioned pictures, and pictures of text messages. About half were primarily of one or more people, including 10% that were selfies, but a wide variety of other things were also pictured. Some of the images were for advertising or to share a joke but in most cases the purpose of the tweet seemed to be to share the minutiae of daily lives, performing the function of chat or gossip, sometimes in innovative ways.

Mobile and Digital Communication. Approaches to Public and Private

Technology and the new tools available to us have changed many fields of our life, especially those related to the way in which we communicate, organize ourselves and obtain information. This context has seen the development of the figure of the “prosumer” and “user generated content”, favored by the phenomenon of collective intelligence and the power of multitudes. The formerly passive audience now has the possibility of participating in the whole news process, from information gathering to the elaboration and distribution of content. From this starting point we can reflect on the existence of “other journalisms”, which include citizen journalism. This is a phenomenon helped by the technological empowerment of the population, which has now become an active audience with the capacity to monitor the big media corporations in a global context of crisis of the media and institutions. Technological democratization offers us a choice in favor of openness and transparency in the mass media, where citizen collaboration and participation become a further option when it comes to contributing solutions to common problems. This joint form of working has served different platforms in elaborating rigorous news reports thanks to user collaboration. News crowdsourcing is not an alternative model to conventional journalism; instead it is a complementary model. The effectiveness of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding (micropatronage of projects) indicates that we are facing the emergence of a different public sphere, one in which communities support and feed new media as against those of the old order.

International Journal of communication, 2019

Prior studies have described selfies as narcissistic vehicles of self-presentation; by contrast, based on social identity theory, this survey of young adults (N = 472) examined how selfies signify forms of personal and social identity. Identity motivations for selfies, social capital affinity on social media, and racial identity were predictors of selfie intensity. Confirming other research, women were most likely to share selfies, but also reported differences to men in selfie identity motivations and contexts. Among LGBTQ participants, selfies for empowerment correlated with online activism.

Mobile and Digital Communication, 2015

Abstract: The “old” concept of masses (studied by Freud, Gasset, Adorno, Canetti, Elias, Blumer among others) seems to be vanished from the recent research in digital media, as if it was a primitive way of being in public. Not denying the social importance of well-structured publics with a clear agenda and rational goals, one tries to bring to light the relevance of the mass behavior and mass propaganda in digital me- dia, frequently expressed in forms of digital sociability (flaming, digital hooliganism and bullying) that seems to be forgotten by some approa- ches. Simultaneously, one tries to identify emerging forms of sociabi- lity that act politically with internal discussion and critical intervention. Nowadays, one assists to the rebirth of political activism. After the cy- nicism of 80th and 90th (Sloterdijk,1987), people seem to be awaking from political apathy, as the first years of the second decade seems to announce. Keywords: Mass, Publics, Forms of Sociability, Political Activism, Digital Media.

2015

Online communication and user performance in the mobile environment have produced a wide range of possibilities concerning time and space. Within this ever-changing ecosystem of coordinates in real and virtual worlds that are being altered and/or juxtaposed, users seem to experience different kinds of perceptions about what was traditionally considered ‘public’ and ‘private’. In this gradation, emotion management and technological literacy appear to play key roles, while concepts like anonymity, authenticity, intimacy, identity or the Self flow intermittently in this media ecology. Users’ management of content and information, as well as the Self and social networking, have proved to be prominent aspects to consider. On the one hand, the fluidity of identity, cellular and nomadic intimacy, network privatism and the tethered, tutored and quantified Self should be highlighted. On the other hand, continuous partial attention, multitasking and/or multiplexing performance, the relationship between memories and places, the limitation of the impact of users’ knowledge on their actions, strong circumstantial pattern behavior, the relevance of temporal priority in digital literacy and the lack of rationality in some attitudes and performances have become ingrained in users’ behavior online. Moreover, this media ecology is framed by the ambiguity and volatility of overall ‘personal policies’ and ‘terms and conditions’, which are added the liquidity and mobility of our society and technology itself and the architecture of exposure (of disclosure/intimacy) to the interface design of mobile communication and devices. Therefore, a reflection is proposed on the concepts of ‘liquid spheres’ or ‘constellations’ as a way of describing this dissolution of boundaries. The discussion is based on an international state of the art review as well as on the results of the project ‘Public and Private in Mobile Communications’, while applying quantitative and qualitative methods and focusing on Portugal. Keywords: Mobile Devices, Liquid Spheres, Constellations of Spheres, Online Identity, Online Privacy, Online Publicity, Online Intimacy, User Profile.

Digital self-representations, for example selfies, are pervasive elements of current digital visual cultures. This paper centers on subjective audience perceptions of expressive authenticity in the field of vernacular self-photography. It reviews research into visual identity work on SNS and visual authenticity in the digital environment. Q methodology, a qualitative-quantitative approach to the study of subjectivity in human behavior, is applied to assess the perceived authenticity of self-representations. Therefore, Q-sorts of 33 different self-photographs were obtained from 29 participants and combined with open interviews in the tradition of visual elicitation. The study provides new insights into the perception of visual authenticity, as Q factor analysis yielded four groups of participants, who differ regarding their evaluation of the authenticity of self-photographs. The analysis reveals essential differences among the factors as regards the meaning of various features, for example, poses, visual styles, and photographic setting, for the authenticity of self-images.

The types of communicating vessel systems that form public and private "spheres" constitute a multifaceted, complex system that is connected to an almost intractable range of issues. The fact is that the facets of mobile technology – ubiquity, multimediality, multidirectionality – form a new context in which trends to renegotiate, defend, adapt or challenge notions of public and private are developed by individuals in their everyday lives and by social institutions through their rules and goals. This book, which brings together presentations from the conference "Public and Private in Mobile Communications", held in March 2015 at Beira Interior University, Portugal, particularly favors discussions on the uses that individuals make of mobile devices in their everyday practices. However, as a background issue, it also includes the sometimes implicit approach about the transformations that connect new technologies to certain cultural practices, forms of interaction a...

Mehdi Khosrow-Pour (Ed) Journalism and Ethics: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice, 2019

While the phenomenon of selfie photographs in the media has been extensively analysed by academics, Selfie Journalism was recently introduced and constitutes one of the most notable phenomena within the digital media environment, raising a number of issues relating to notions of infotainment and impartial reporting, especially in 'difficult' sectors, such as politics. This paper identifies the specific characteristics of Selfie Journalism in political reporting. Based on both quantitative and qualitative research, the study analyses these characteristics in the period of parliamentary elections of 2016 in Cyprus. The aim of the study is dual: first, to examine the extensive use of Selfie Journalism by candidates themselves in political campaigning and, secondly, to examine the impact of this phenomenon upon the media and, in turn, media engagement in such political tactics. The greater scope of this study evolves around the argument that Selfie Journalism, as a new species of participatory journalism, has penetrated the media in an effort to attract larger audiences.

Gaby David’s dissertation “Processes of Legitimation: 10 Years of Mobile Images” examines the legitimation and validation processes that vernacular mobile images underwent between the years 2005 and 2015. Her thesis explores answers to questions like: How did the production and consumption of private colloquial mobile images, as a visual phenomenon, develop from being a practice among a few individuals to being a widespread global habit? With an increase in use of mobile images in everyday life, how have its socio-cultural and visual effects been perceived? In what places has this happened? The first and second chapters are a study of the cameraphone and its amateur use in early years, and the legitimation and value given to this early creation by artistic and media cultural gatekeepers. This is done through an ethnographic analysis of the Pocket Films Festival, and a global journalistic timeline of cameraphone images and the mediatization of them to create hard news. She also looks at the times during and after the smartphone mass penetration of the market and the use of its images. The third chapter focuses on studying peer-centered validations, as communities of practice, and it highlights the latest passage of the use of mobile images to a more conversational-connected use, demonstrating how the selfie and the short-lived or momentary snapshot dynamic influences today’s sharing of such. She shows the results of focus groups, and online/offline interviews, that she has conducted. The fourth and last chapter is an a posteriori autoethnography of her own practices. Are we finally experiencing what Alexandre Astruc dreamt of: the fact that everyone would be able to use a camera pen? What transpired once this practice became adopted into the mainstream? Overall, this thesis is an endeavor to understand the evolving use of mobile images to convey complex communicative and multifaceted emotionally private and/or intimate meanings.