Creating Places with Self and Networked Narratives

By Tyler Leese

The way we see the world is based on our own perceptions of space, from both literary and conceptual views which help to form place within each of our minds. In social media, places are shown and described by different people who each have a different understanding of what they see. During the course of my observation study with Instagram, I have come to realize that users regularly update their photo stream to share moments with their friends and try to relate their surroundings to all points of views looking in. These post human practices indicate that each user is using social media networks (SNS) as part of their daily life and therefore adopting traits of a Cyborg. (McNeill, 2012) mentions this, as users of social networks are thinking about life from a social network point of view. When a user is, for instance, mountain biking, the user takes a picture of their location or part of the track, hashtags the name of the track, and tags their friends who ride there regularly. A conversation then starts about this part of the track, based on experience and real life contact with the area. This is a form of networked narrative and shows how geographical location can form place and memories both online and offline for those who are tagged into the photo. 

 

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 Others who see this photo may perceive something different and therefore will not feel the same meaning. I regularly ride my mountain bike, and use Instagram and Facebook to share photos of different locations which I geotag and share to my photo stream, which forms my identity though my stories (Van Luyn, 2015). My friends will then see my photo and comment and share their thoughts on my photo from different parts of the world. My narrative then becomes part of my identity and is truth of my real life. Intertextual referencing through hash tagging different terms which only my friends who mountain bike understand, helps new friends to understand more about this sport and how it relates to my identity. Instagram has different powers to Facebook as it limits the way we can build our online narratives with the form of images and videos only. Users of Instagram would find a post consisting of only words abnormal, whereas users of Facebook sometimes only post words and no pictures which have clear meaning to their readers are easy to visualize. This creates place and familiarity for users of SNS and also shows the different mindsets between users of each site.

References:

Van Luyn, A. (2015). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place, Week 6: Networked Narratives: Intertextuality (PowerPoint Presentation). Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Mcneill, L. (2012). There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Volume 35, Number 1. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au


Image Reference:

Cision US, Incorporated. Build Your Brand With Jenn Herman [Image]. Retrieved http://cision-wp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/us/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Story-Instagram-QA.jpg