The Mapping of Instagram
Instagram (picture 1) is an app which lets it's users share pictures and now videos with friends. It is a visual form of social networking. Instagram shapes our understanding of space, place and power by it's use of photos and videos. Instagram also maps how we see the world by reflecting and informing others of our own visual experiences.
Richard Prouty (2009) writes about a term 'flaneur' which is "used to describe someone adrift in the city, a detached observers strolling through the streets at a leisurely pace". The flaneur is also an "image of movement through the
social space of modernity, an explorer who finds their identity among
the realisations of the city" (Barnes, 1997). Instagram is used by many to conceptualize flaneur. This social networking site requires it's users to demonstrate 'sousveillance', which means a willing to share private stuff about yourself that you may not normally share with others.
Instagram allows its users to be monitored by its virtual panopticon, meaning the website is set out to allow any user access to your personal photos or videos. This shows that Instagrams users have power over what information they provide but once they have posted a picture it is there for the world to see.
Traveling through Instagrams cyber space is much easy than if it were a physical space as it is much faster and easier to access private information online than it is in life form. Michael Foucault also explains that "power in modern society is imposed not by the personal presence and brute force of an elite caste but by the way each individual learns the art of self-surveillance" (Turkle, 1995, p247).
References:
Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Cyber-flaneur. Retrieved from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html
Crickenberger, H. M (2007). The Flaneur. Retrieved from http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/flaneur.html
Joyce, R. (2010). Internet surveillance: A virtual panopticon?. Retrieved from http://learn.bowdoin.edu/courses/soc022-richard-joyce/2010/04/internet-surveillance-a-virtual-panopticon/
Prouty, R. (2009). A turtle on a leash. Retrieved from http://onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. Published by Simon & Schuster.
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Instagram is a iPhone app which let people share pictures with friends -
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http://www.gadgetmech.com/apps/what-is-instagram/#sthash.4DoodLAO.dpu
Instagram shapes the understandings we have on space, place and power.
You've made some valid points about Instagram, saying that uses are willing to share information that they wouldn't normally share with others. However I see this as untrue. Being an avid user of this sight, it's obvious that people up photos of themselves using filters to appear more attractive or even skinner. I believe that when Instagram is used people don't necessarily put a lot of personal information, but more pictures of what they wished they looked like. Some details are going to be left out. It is like telling a story. If someone wants it to go for 60 seconds, the details that would make it last an hour have to go. You just hit the pain points it isn’t lying. (It is not incompleteness either) When mapmakers hit the main points, ignoring, say, all tiny twists of a coastline, they call it generalization. (Dennis Wood, Ward L. Kaiser & Bob Abramma, 2001,pg. 10) The panopticon is, I agree, used in this sense, as people are clearly trying to look their best all the time, making sure that others see their best side- face and personality!
ReplyDeleteDennis Wood, Ward L. Kaiser & Bob Abramma, 2001. Seeing though maps: Many ways to see the world. New internationalists Publications Ltd.