Is a picture worth a thousand words? “On written text and the (moving) image, their relationship within Facebook’s interface and the possible humanistic consequences” Nena Snoeren University of Amsterdam MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture 28th of June 2019 2 Index Page Abstract 4 1. Introduction 5 2. Text/Image 8 2.1 On text 9 2.2 On image 11 2.3 The relationship and the divide 13 3. Text/Image within new media 17 3.1 Affordances 21 3.2 Methodology 24 3.3 Text/Image within Facebook’s interface 26 4. Case studies 27 4.1 Case study #1: The status update 28 4.2 Case study #2: Emoji, symbols, stickers and GIFs 39 4.3 Case study #3: The person 47 5. Discussion 53 6. Conclusion 58 7. References 61 3 Abstract Our media world is made up out of two visual components: images and written text. Together they form a big part of our understanding and online communication. In the recent past images have become significantly easier to produce and share. This has had its effect on the position of written text in media and communication, that now operates within the ‘logic of the image’. In this work, the relationship of written text and images will be explored through a historical and philosophical overview of these two concepts. Furthermore, Facebook’s interface will be analysed through the ‘discursive interface analysis’, focussing on three case studies: ‘the status update’, ‘emoji, symbols, stickers and GIFs’ and ‘the person’. These analyses will be conducted from a contemporary historical perspective, mapping the changes in Facebook’s interface updates in relation to written text and images over time. Considering the concept of productive power, the features are researched through the concept of affordances, seeing how certain changes in features produce a specific normativity towards images and text. To conclude, the image-shift that becomes apparent is analysed from a humanistic perspective, discussing the possible humanistic consequences of the change in the text/image relationship. 4 1. Introduction Does the title page of this work feel a bit empty to you? Would it look more appealing with an image on it, or a bigger title? You are reading this work now, but if it were laying on a table amongst a few other papers with images on them, would you feel drawn to reading this one? The answer is probably: no. From my personal and academic experience, it has been my observation that the world around us, and new and social media in particular, have become more (moving) image orientated. Our technologies have increasingly become compatible with (moving) images in the last -and even more so in this- century. Moving images have migrated from living in cinemas to living in our homes on the television, then on the computer and now in our hands via our smartphones. Cinema and television were made to show the moving image, initially the computer and the telephone were not. Computer to computer communications were written-text based and phone communications verbal-text based. As computer technologies advanced, the image and later the moving image (first in the GIF format) made its way onto the internet, onto our home computers and not much later onto our internet connected phones. Now our timelines, news feeds and digital communications have shown a shift from predominantly textual information towards images, symbols, videos, GIFs and emoji. Not only has the image found its way on the text-based medium of the internet, it is now not merely being supported, but it has been thoroughly integrated into its structures. Modern social media platforms are specifically built to support and stimulate the use and viewing of (moving) images. User posts that contain images or moving images are far more visible than those only containing text. Newer popular social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have even kept the use of written text to a minimum, making images the main form of content and communication from the start. Academic research into written text and images has been conducted by many fields, including psychology, philosophy, linguistics, communication, television studies, film studies and new media studies. Research into internet platforms, social media and web interfaces has been done extensively within new media studies, focussing on the content and structure of certain online platforms and their interfaces. A combination of research into written text and images as ontological research subjects, within an online platform, however, has not been conducted. I aim to make my work here a contribution to platform studies within new 5 media studies, in this new but necessary way. Research into digital platforms and their interfaces are highly relevant at this time, seeing their immense user base and thus their far-reaching influence and power. Research into the interfaces of the most popular social media platforms discussing the state of text and image is essential as they are the cornerstones of modern human culture, understanding and communication. This work will therefore be focussing on the changing relationship between written text and the (moving) image on the most popular social media platform until this day: Facebook. Neil Postman talks about not seeing the point of studying media unless doing so in a moral or ethical context in “The Humanism of Media Ecology”, the keynote address at the Inaugural Media Ecology Association Convention in 2000. Other well-known media scholars like Marshall McLuhan did not agree with this idea and thought one ought to stay ‘neutral’ (Postman 11). I agree with Postman in the sense that one can and should reflect on media within a moral context. We can reflect, analyse and dissect what certain media are, how they function and how they work, and then? What deeper meaning and possible consequences does their influence have? These, I believe, are the important things to consider. Humanism concerns itself with the ethical consequences of human actions and decisions. A humanistic approach thus evaluates the morality behind certain matters. I want to touch upon this humanistic point of view in relation to the use of written text and images within new media in this work. If we are looking at a platform that currently has 2.3 billion active users, facilitating a practice at the core of our human experience: communicating with one another through text and images, the humanistic consequences of this practise must be reflected upon. This is not to say that my research here will hold all the answers to what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for us humans about the changing text/image relationship on Facebook, rather it is to be seen as a (limited) exploration into the humanistic issues this changing relationship could be bringing about. Therefore, the research question of this work is as follows: “What has the relationship been between written text and the (moving) image within Facebook’s interface structure and what could this mean in terms of humanistic consequences?” Firstly, to lay a good foundation for a discussion on changing text/image relationships within a new media platform, I will be exploring what written text, images and their relationship are in the first section of this work. I will use a multi-disciplinary approach 6 for this as to explore the text/image question from multiple perspectives in relation to new media. I believe such a multi-disciplinary approach is necessary in order to rightfully address the diverse nature of these research subjects. In order to research what the ontology of written text and (moving) images are, academic works from the disciplines of psychology, communication, linguistics, anthropology, film studies and new media studies are used. Following, I will use certain main features of Facebook’s interface as case studies to analyse the specific text/image relationships over time. The case studies will be: ‘The status update’, ‘Emoji, symbols, stickers and GIFs’ and ‘The person’. These contemporary historical analyses will be conducted through the ‘discursive interface analysis’ to thoroughly research what changes occurred to the interface structure at what time and what this signifies in terms of normativity. The concept of affordances and productive power will provide helpful here. Conducting these analyses on Facebook’s interface will serve as an example for the greater changes that are happening within the (new) media landscape. A discussion of the above sections will follow, exploring the deeper implications of the changes analysed in the case studies in connection with the first section on written text and images. This is the place where the humanistic context will come forward and possible moral consequences will be explored. Image 0. Picture dictionary point it 7 2. Text/Image Traveling without the internet, some people used -and maybe still use- a little picture dictionary called point it, for basic communication with people that do not speak their language. Obviously, more complex communication was not possible with this little book, but with the internet not being around and/or accessible yet, it made travelling a lot easier. From a text-image relationship perspective, this is the idea of a picture dictionary (as point it calls itself on its cover). It is using a set of images to function as a type of language, organised by its ‘universal’ uses and associations independent of any written language. A dictionary, both in definition and etymology, has a strong connection to words and written language. In the case of point it one could thus argue a picture dictionary is a contradictio in terminis; as a picture or an image is not a word or language but something different, yet connected. We all know that written text and images are different from one another, at least, they are to us humans.