News Images on Instagram

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which the online photo-sharing service Instagram assists professional and citizen photojournalists in the performative construction of a hyperreality in accordance with Baudrillard’s theory. Based on a visual analysis of the Instagram photo feeds of six citizen photojournalists and six professional photojournalists, this research aims to identify the various simulations and discourses used by professional and citizen photojournalists alike to stage their photographs and to characterise the differences demarcating the professional–amateur divide. It also examines how the interaction between technology, photojournalistic practices and subjectivity stimulates the mediations and negotiations that condition the construction of this hyperreality. The study demonstrates that by producing, uploading, sharing, commenting upon and promoting these altered photo reportages, the Instagram community inadvertently creates a hyperreal depiction of the world that challenges both, the sense of authenticity characteristic of citizen journalism and amateur photography, as well as the realism to which professional photojournalism has historically subscribed. Moreover, it argues that in order to create their images, Instagram photojournalists use a series of aesthetic conventions and performative discourses that correspond to their roles as either amateurs or professionals. Nevertheless, each group tries to simulate the aforementioned conventions and discourses of the other in an attempt to get closer either to the sense of amateurish authenticity or to professional neatness. As a result, this paradoxical interaction has the potential to transform today’s visual imagery by means of a simulated reality that needs further explanation.

KEYWORDS:

• algorithmic photography
• authenticity
• citizen journalism
• hyperrealism
• Instagram
• photojournalism
• simulation

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the group of photojournalists who comprised the sample and their invaluable contribution to this research, Neil Blain, Karen Boyle, David Rolinson, guest editor Stuart Allan and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Regarded as the world’s fastest-growing social site (Lunden 2014) with over 200 million users (Taylor 2014), Instagram is a social media platform that allows the production, retouching, sharing and commenting of photographs between members of the online community. Galleries are displayed and arranged as photo feeds, and although both a mobile and a desktop version are available, its usage is widely popular through mobile devices.

2. Some examples might include citizen imagery of the September 11 attacks (2001), the Madrid train bombings (2004), the South Asian tsunami (2004), the London bombings (2005), Hurricane Katrina (2005), the anti-government protests in Myanmar (Burma) (2007), the post-election protests in Iran (2009), the Arab uprisings (2011–2012) and the Boston Marathon bombings (2013).

3. See New York Times photographer Damon Winter’s controversy surrounding his Hipstamatic-processed photographic series “A Grunt’s Life” (Alper 2014; Knibbs 2013a; Myers 2012; Winter 2011).

4. Conventional production techniques refer to the normative aesthetic rules, camera settings and methods normally used by photographers to produce their images, whilst conventional post-production techniques refer to the methods followed either in a darkroom or through computer software to improve the quality of the image after it has been shot.

5. The process of adding geographical identification metadata to media.