The research project Networked visually studies visual practices in two popular image-sharing sites, Instagram and Pinterest. We ask how regular users and businesses operate in an increasingly visual online culture, where actions are represented for example using selfies, memes and virals. The web is an increasingly visual medium as mobile technologies, cameras in phones and mobile web connections have improved. At the same time many social media services that emphasise the visual have become more popular. Personal photography has become common and it arouses interesting questions about defining identities, self-expression, taste preferences and the redefinition of boundaries of private and public.
Research questions of the project can be defined as follows:
1) How do ordinary users attach themselves to the web with the photos they are taking or modifying?
2) How do companies build their visibility online and how do they adopt strategies from ordinary users?
Using diaries, interviews and online observation as methods we strive to find out something about the experiences of attachment to the web through images and the meanings users give to images and attachments.
Professor Janne Seppänen
janne.seppanen@uta.fi
Researcher Eliisa Vainikka
eliisa.vainikka@uta.fi