Photography and social networks: a case study in situated affectivity

Abstract

In our activity on social networks, we tend to crystallize happy moments of our life that we want to share with other people. In doing so, we seem to display the best version of ourselves, and in editing our digital self, we can create an ideal self. In the traditional debate on the risks of technology, many researchers have expressed the fear that this tendency could represent a way of falsifying the reality of our selves by offering a single piece of information about our lives: one in which we are happy, satisfied with our life choices and fulfilled. This risks generating negative effects in others as it produces comparisons in which people may be left feeling dissatisfied; sometimes, especially at a certain age, it could even be dangerous to linger in comparisons of this sort (for a general discussion on these topics see Fasoli 2019; Toma 2016). But: is it really a problem – something ‘bad’ – that we tend to publish our positive moments?

In this paper I would like to offer a different interpretation of this phenomenon, framing it within the terms of two recent philosophical debates and showing that there is another more innocent, and perhaps naïve, interpretation of this tendency, which has to do with the question: for whom do we post pictures? Who is the recipient of our posts on social networks?

I will discuss these questions by framing them within the context of the debate on situated affectivity (Griffiths & Scarantino 2009; Colombetti & Krueger 2015), and exploring the interpretation of posts on social networks as potential examples of affective artifacts (Piredda 2020). Moreover, posts on social networks may be interpreted within the discussion of the extended/distributed self as pieces of our extended selves (Belk 2013; Candiotto, Piredda 2019; Heersmink 2017). Taking a first-person perspective on this problem changes the evaluation of this phenomenon and highlights the role of photography in structuring our life-narrative – a role it played even before the arrival of social networks.