7-1 Discussion: Social Media
elect a social media platform and discuss its influence relating to photography.
In your initial post, consider the following:
What is the platform’s impact on photography?
How has its use of photographs made the world smaller?
Does the way the platform is designed alter the way that users imagine or experience their lives in the real world?
Some people believe that social media discourages experimentation and uniqueness in photography and encourages sameness through use of memetic or clich approaches to images. Do you agree? Why or why not?
In response to your peers, select two classmates who chose different platforms than you did. Discuss the following:
Compare the role of the photographs in your platform to that of the photographs in your peers’ platforms.
How does the platform change the very value we place on the images incorporated?
Reply to peers
Peer 1
Snapchat is a world wide social media platform that im pretty sure we are all familiar with. Snap chat allows you to take images, edit them, and share them with your closest friends and family. This platform has had an impact on photography because it has given us another option for photo taking and editing. For me personally i love taking pictures on this platform because i am able to edit images a lot easier by adding filters, stickers, text and more to my images and videos. Instead of going through another app or editing platform you are able to edit the image in many ways through the app. By adding different filters and using many of the other editing techniques available in the app you can manipulate an image to your liking. The image could look completely different from the original image! I do agree that social media discourages experimentation and uniqueness because snapchat wasnt designed to be like other photo editors, it was made for almost everyone to look the same in the images by applying the same filters to their images. These filters make everyones images so similar that there is rarely any uniqueness in photos anymore.
peer 2
The platform I choose is VSCO. What I find interesting about the platform is the social stigma it has right now. It’s almost like an in-between from Tumblr and Instagram. As a guy there is also a stigma; “why would you have one? it’s girly” and these social ideas of the platform actually shape the photos put on there. I see it as a place where people post the photos they actually like and don’t care about how their peers will view them. Social media in general has changed photography too, with the quality of cameras today and the accessibility makes taking photos super common. With this influx of photos being shared, not only can we see what celebrities or other inspirational people are up too but can even connect to like minded people in the job world. I think the platform does alter the users view of living in the real world and this doesn’t just apply to VSCO. However, with it being a smaller platform I think there is less of an effect. Social media is now just a highlight reel of peoples lives while I feel VSCO is just a toned down version of that, like the b-sides. I believe in the past few years, social media is moving towards a more experimental side, even though it doesn’t reward it through their algorithm. I feel people are getting bored of social media and also mentally drained, I know a lot of friends who have openly stated that they have anxiety when posting on social media and that is just wrong. This anxiety does lead to playing it safe and posting cliche photographs but as people start to get through the anxiety and just post whatever they want I see social media being a place where people can be more experimental.
