The Social Life of Snapshots the Past, Present, and Future of Personal Photography
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The Social Life of Snapshots The Past, Present, and Future of Personal Photography Morgan Golata Ames School of Information University of California, Berkeley Advised by Professor Nancy Van House Final Project (Option B: Research Track) for the degree of Master in Information Management and Systems Submitted May 4, 2006 Morgan Ames The Social Life of Snapshots Abstract Digital cameras, cameraphones, online sharing, and other innovations are expanding the ways we interact with photographs. This study examines the past and present social uses of personal photography and reports on an investigation into possible future uses of cameraphones and online/mobile image sharing. We conducted 57 interviews with 51 participants and carried out a 10-month investigation of cameraphone use in a group of 70 strongly-connected participants, all on the west coast of the United States. We found that cameraphones are interpreted as three devices in one: they are memory-capture devices, communicative devices, and expressive devices, with the third being dominant. Traditionally, cameras were primarily memory-capture devices, especially in family photography where the most research has been done. To balance tendencies toward technological or social determinism, we use concepts from Activity Theory and the Social Construction of Technology in our analysis. We compare our results to those of researchers doing similar work in Japan and Finland. 2 Morgan Ames The Social Life of Snapshots Table of Contents Introduction...................................................................................................................5 My Contributions....................................................................................................................................... 8 Related Work ................................................................................................................9 The History and Social Uses of Family Film Photography ....................................................................... 9 Richard Chalfen .................................................................................................................................. 10 Christopher Musello............................................................................................................................ 14 Gillian Rose ........................................................................................................................................ 19 Other Cultural Historians and Critical Theorists................................................................................. 23 Photography in Human-Computer Interaction Research ......................................................................... 26 Cameraphone research in HCI ............................................................................................................ 26 Explorations of Digital Photograph Use and Sharing in HCI ............................................................. 29 Tools for Sharing and Organization.................................................................................................... 32 Crossing the Boundaries .......................................................................................................................... 34 Cameraphone Use in Japan ................................................................................................................. 35 Cameraphone Communication in Finland........................................................................................... 35 Photoblogging in the UK .................................................................................................................... 37 Themes and Lessons................................................................................................................................ 38 Time.................................................................................................................................................... 38 Sociality .............................................................................................................................................. 39 Sharing ................................................................................................................................................ 39 Functionality ....................................................................................................................................... 41 Themes in Method .............................................................................................................................. 41 The Importance of Culture.................................................................................................................. 43 Methods .......................................................................................................................44 Interviews ................................................................................................................................................ 47 Photo Elicitation.................................................................................................................................. 50 Other Data Sources: Participant Observation, MMM2 Data ................................................................... 51 3 Morgan Ames The Social Life of Snapshots The MMM2 Investigation........................................................................................................................ 53 Technical Specifications of MMM2 ................................................................................................... 54 Study Duration and Interview Schedule.............................................................................................. 57 Participant Demographics and Networks............................................................................................ 59 The Researcher as Participant ............................................................................................................. 60 The Participant as Researcher ............................................................................................................. 61 Grounded Theory Analysis...................................................................................................................... 63 Results..........................................................................................................................65 The Social Uses of Cameraphones .......................................................................................................... 66 Memory, Identity, and Functionality................................................................................................... 66 Relationships and Communication ..................................................................................................... 70 Self-presentation and Self-expression................................................................................................. 78 Summary of Social Uses ..................................................................................................................... 80 Photographic Events ................................................................................................................................ 81 Planning .............................................................................................................................................. 82 Shooting (and first-pass editing) ......................................................................................................... 83 Processing ........................................................................................................................................... 84 Other Editing Events........................................................................................................................... 85 Exhibition............................................................................................................................................ 86 Communicational Components of Photography...................................................................................... 88 Participants.......................................................................................................................................... 88 Settings and Topics ............................................................................................................................. 88 Code.................................................................................................................................................... 89 Summary............................................................................................................................................. 91 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................. 91 Future Directions.........................................................................................................93 Acknowledgements......................................................................................................95 Literature Cited...........................................................................................................96 4 Morgan Ames The Social Life of Snapshots Introduction Photography has grown in the last century from a curiosity to a pervasive practice that engages us all as photographers, subjects, and viewers. Photographs are important