Flickr and Public Image-Sharing: Distant Closeness and Photo Exhibition Nancy A. Van House Abstract School of Information This paper presents an empirical study in progress of University of California, Berkeley the use of Flickr.com™, part of an on-going research Berkeley, CA 94720-4600 program on personal digital media, including images.
[email protected] Two new kinds of image-sharing with Flickr are “distant closeness” and “photo exhibition.” We are seeing changing uses of images in social interaction and increased multi-modal communication. Keywords digital photos, distant closeness, Flickr.com, photography, photo sharing, social networking ACM Classification H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous Introduction The popularity of image-sharing sites like Flickr.com™ allows us to observe what “ordinary” users do when given the ability to more readily incorporate images in their everyday activity. More generally, we are seeing Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). large numbers of people engaged in the creation and CHI 2007, April 28May 3, 2007, San Jose, California, USA. sharing of new media, in the context of a long tradition ACM 978-1-59593-642-4/07/0004. of media use, in this case, personal photography. In this paper, we report on early findings of a study of Third, photos are used for self-representation. People Flickr and put these findings about the uses of new seek to present themselves in such a way as to ensure media and technologies in the context of photographic that others see them as they wish to be seen [7].