Affording images: Digital imaging and media-sharing practices in a corpus of young people’s cameraphone images Paper presented at Multimodality in Education colloquium held at Mont Fleur, Stellenbosch on 10 August, 2011 by Marion Walton and Silke Hassreiter, Centre for Film and Media Studies. University of Cape Town The affordances of mobile phones as devices for creating, publishing and distributing images means that they are often seen as a threat to young people’s safety or to public morality. Alternatively, they are celebrated as having immense potential for supporting an individualised and highly networked mode of mobile learning or ‘m-learning’. These issues are particularly significant in the global South, where photographic practices and digital imaging are being adopted rapidly, as mobile networks reach over a billion people and feature phones with cameras become increasingly accessible. This paper documents the image-sharing and photographic practices of fourteen young people who participated in a mobile video-making project over four months in July-November 2010 in Makhaza, Khayelitsha. We analyse the corpus of images which they shared with us as researchers. We explore distinct communicative genres which, in this context, are associated with (i) personal photographs, (ii) photographic composites (iii) downloaded images from popular culture (iv) multimodal image messaging. In this paper, our focus is specifically on interpersonal meanings and the representation of interpersonal meanings and social distance. We argue that the social practices of young people and the marginal contexts of this appropriation play key roles in their domestication of mobile photography. Consequently, it is a mistake to assume that new genres and practices can simply be ‘read off’ by listing the features or affordances of the new generations of smart phones. Instead, it is necessary to consider a wider range of contexts and uses before the ‘affordances’ of the new medium can start to be understood. In particular, the differences associated with the specific contextual meanings of artefacts such as mobile phones, local genres of communication and interaction, and broader issues of access to communication infrastructure and mobility need to be considered. We argue that a contextualised study such as this should be conducted before embarking on the development of new curricula for learning or self-expression for young people.
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NYU, October 2009 [email protected][email protected]http://marionwalton.wordpres s.com Marion Walton, Silke Hassreiter, CFMS, University of Cape Town Project funded by Nokia Research in collaboration with Gary Marsden, Sena Allen and the UCT Centre in ICT4D Download project report from www.marionwalton.com/publications-and-links affording images Digital imaging and media-sharing practices in a corpus of young people’s cameraphone images
Marion Walton, Silke Hassreiter, CFMS, University of Cape TownProject funded by Nokia Research in collaboration with Gary Marsden, Sena Allen and the UCT Centre in ICT4D
Download project report from www.marionwalton.com/publications-and-links
affording imagesDigital imaging and media-sharing practices in a corpus of young people’s
cameraphone images
mobile images
• This paper documents the image-sharing and photographic practices of sixteen young people who participated in a mobile video-making project funded by Nokia Research over four months in July-November 2010 in Makhaza, Khayelitsha.
Ikamva Media, Image and Expression Class 2010
Started with 20
participants
Grade 10
15-18 years
Variable participation
• Mobile phones in the global South are ‘the first screen’ - only ‘fourth screen’ in North.
• What are the local and situated meanings of digital and mobile photography for young people?
• Large generally low-income urban settlement on urban periphery of Cape Town.
• Established in the mid-1980s as apartheid strategy ‘as far from the city as possible’ (Skuseand Cousins, 2008)
• History of spatial and racial segregation, political struggle and economic disadvantage.
• Only 38 per cent live in formal structures, many without access to water, sanitation, electricity, streets or lighting (Silber and Geffen, 2009).
• Swelling population, many migrants, successive governments fail to keep up with the demand for land, housing and other services.
ethics and privacy
• The young people agreed to share their cellphoneimages with us – both from their own phones and at the end of the project, from the Nokia phones.
• Sharing was voluntary and some students chose to delete images or not to share at all.
• Our initial agreement was not to publish the images – we would like to renegotiate this in response to our findings about phones as a public space for this peer group.
affording meaning
• Need for a contextual, situated understanding of affordances.
• ecological psychology - perception as a relationship between organisms and their environment. Although physical objects have objective physical qualities, these only become affordances in relation to a particular organism (Gibson, 1979).
• the ‘potential uses’ of an object and ‘signifying potential’ of signs (Van Leeuwen, 2005).
systemic affordances
• ‘The cellphone’ and ‘the smartphone’ don’t exist.• Phones are not ‘a’ single medium – affordances are
situational and arise from the interaction of a complex range of factors.
• Crime, conspicuous consumption, local genres of photography
• These ‘rules of communication’ shape discourse (structure/code), but are also appropriated by users (agency/semiosis).
mobile images
• Ongoing ethnography has identified distinct communicative genres in this context,– Private identity work – Social sharing of individual photographs– Creation of photographic composites and ‘photo cards’
(photos with messages)– Sharing downloaded images from popular culture –
celebrities, ‘photo cards’ and pictures of commodities
• How do the young people use these genres to represent and construct interpersonal meanings and social distance?
Available feature phones
Allow internet, low res photos and videos, limited memory and processing power
own phones
No phone
Basic phone
Feature phone
expensive facebook
Quite expensive
Very expensive
Quite cheap
Not expensive or
cheapVery cheap
or free
questionnaire47 participants from IkamvaYouth – all classes
affordable mxit
Quite expensive
Very expensive
Quite cheap
Not expensive or
cheapVery cheap
or free
questionnaire47 participants from IkamvaYouth – all classes
free bluetooth
Quite expensive
Not expensive or cheap Very cheap
or free
Quite cheap
questionnaire47 participants from IkamvaYouth – all classes
corpus
33
177
121
95
149
308
219
51
85
115
118
119
105
132
3
74
10
23
81
89
18
3
79
80
5
56
78
108
41
33
59
74
54
44
95
0
74
0
16
51
84
17
A Nokia
Z Nokia
L Nokia
Y Nokia
V Nokia
S Nokia
N Nokia
Z Nokia
M Nokia
S Nokia
U Nokia
Y Nokia
Y Nokia
L own phone
A own phone
Z own phone
Z own phone
L own phone
N own phone
Y own phone
S own phone
Images retrieved from mobile phones
Named images Total images
I took this photo of myself to see how I look like with these shades. Instead of looking into the mirror.
• Name of pic: 100823_130026.jpgI was playing around with the phone back home when I was bored. Just to let people know how I
look like.• Name of pic: 100831_134021.jpgThere was a lamp in the background. That photo did not work out.• Name of pic: 100830_125051.jpgI wanted to know how I look like with this hat / hat and shades on.• Name of pic 1: 100823_170652.jpg• Name of pic 2: 100821_084117.jpgThis is my boyfriend. We are together for 3 weeks. I like him a lot, that’s why I took the photo of
him. When I miss him, I look at the photo. We took this photo at his place. • Name of the pic: Mzu.jpgThis little clip of sneakers I took from a friend’s (female) phone last Saturday. I connected via
Bluetooth to her phone and took it off. I like sneakers. *grins*• Name of pic: evolutionary.gifThis photo of Ronaldo I also took from a friend’s phone via Bluetooth. Because I like him so much.• Name of pic: C ronaldo.jpgPhotocardsI took this picture from a friend. • Name of the pic: lover.gifThis one I also got from a friend. • Name of the pic: Our-day.gift.gifThis one I got from my boyfriend. *blushing*
iKasi net
sharing practices
• Ego-centric social network analysis
• With whom do you share phone and mobile media?
• Who shares with you?• Default values –
collectivist among peers.
• Some generational differences in strength of sharing ties.
questionnaire20 participants from Grade 10
Sharing practices
• SA – unaffordable broadband internet.
• Intermittent access to mobile internet
• Appropriation of channels for free communication.
• Peer to peer communication• Phone media galleries• Proxemic networking via
bluetooth(Walton and Kreutzer,
forthcoming)
ikasi.net
p2p ‘Facebook’
p2p social networking
• Image networks - Phone gallery and phone are used to represent social network
• Important role in image-management
• Face detection used to map visual social network.
• 6 participants’ image networks analysed so far.
• Sub-sample of images with faces detected (n=1219)
• Ratio calculated (image height: detected face height)
• Detection algorithm uses Processing and Java OpenGL libraries
nokia phones (N=2129)
Images from Nokia
phones, mapped with VisualCultures
own phones (N=2129)
Images from
participants’ own phones
significance?
• Sub-sample of images with faces detected (n=1219)
• The distribution of Ratio is different across categories of phone. (p < 0.05)
intimacy
• In other words...• When using cheap camera
phones, these young people foregrounded faces to a greater extent than when they were able to use more sophisticated phones.
• Social distance is more likely to be constructed as intimate or personal for photographers using cameras on basic phones with limited memory.
random sample (n=450)VisualCultures allows graphing of images
photographersImages can be explored in different ways e.g. By photographer
Only one face detectedNumber of faces detected (only one in most shots).
image:face ratio on own phonesHigher ratio between detected faces and image size i.e. close ups (more found on participants own phones).
unnamed imagesIndividually named images more likely to be closeups (more found on participants own phones).
• Self-portraits and ‘mirror mode’• Advertising, popular culture and fashion genres
predominate• Settings are often staged to foreground face and
conceal surroundings• Importance of verbal annotations on image and in
filename suggests phone as publication platform and interpersonal communicative function.
• Playful and strategic use of preset frames, graphic elements and filters.
• Only a handful of documentary-style shots
conclusion
• Consider a wider range of contexts and uses before the ‘affordances’ of the new medium can start to be understood.
• The social practices of young people, local genres of communication and interaction, access to communication infrastructure and mobility, and the marginal contexts of this appropriation play key roles in their domestication of mobile photography.
• Affordances are systemic - not everyone can afford to publish online and new generations of smart or feature phones are different to basic phones or feature phones with simple cameras and without much memory.
• Importance of filenames and naming practices in bluetoothusability.
• Design new curricula for learning or self-expression in relation to existing ecosystem.
VideosNow published online on Ikamva Youth website and YouTube channelhttp://goo.gl/AWKVPSilke’s Nokia project report
Hassreiter, S., Walton, M. and Marsden, G. (2011). Degrees of sharing. Public voices, impression management and mobile video production in a participatory media project for teens in Makhaza, Khayelitsha. Project report produced for Nokia Research, February 2011.
Download from www.marionwalton.com/publications-and-links/
acknowledgements
– Gary Marsden
– Sena Allen
– Joy Olivier
– Luyanda Kota
– Winile Mabhoko
– And especially to all the student participants and Ikamva Youth
