1. Qualitative Research into Facebook Pictures
The task is for you to decide whether personal photographs on Facebook are highly
ritualized and conventionalized, with a rather limited range of subjects being recorded
(Chalfen 1987 and Musello, 1980).
The task will also ask you to consider and comment on the ways people “perform” in front
of the camera and use Facebook to project an idealized representation of their lives.
According to Andrew Mendelson and Zizi Papacharissi there are a limited range of personal
photographs that dominate college student's Facebook profiles. Read the list and see how many
examples you can find from your own pictures and your friends pictures on Facebook.
You need some record of the frequency certain picture types, so draw a table and mark the
number of times the picture types occur.
Picture Type: Frequency Features that you notice – e.g. body
position, facial expressions, locations –
themes or similarities between pictures
within the same Picture Type.
Same sex photographs: all male
Same sex photographs: all female
Social rituals (e.g. prop night,
weddings etc)
Reflection Shots
Family Shots (especially with older
members of the family)
Parties:
Underage drinking
Drug use
Cigarette smoking
Platonic friendships with people of
the opposite sex
Landscapes or cityscapes without
people posing for the photograph
Romantic relationship
Gigs shots
Holiday photographs
“Hanging Out” photographs – pizza
nights, dying hair, playing video
games etc. In other words people
are not 'dressed-up' for a night out
Strange photographs that if they
were of you, you would remove from
Facebook (why would you remove
them?)