Preliminary findings of my dissertation research on photographs of self-injury on Flickr, presented at Association of Internet Researchers conference in Seattle, Oct 12 2011

1. Picturesque wounds: Narrative performance of self-injurers on Flickr October 12, 2011 Yukari Seko (York/Ryerson Universities) Photo by Sebastian R

2. Internet and self-injury (SI) Internet as a low-risk venue to search info, express themselves, find peers with similar interest, and formulate SI subculture Rapid increase of user-generated multimedia SI content Existing studies: predominantly text-oriented Tend to to rely on medical interpretation Focus mainly on “communities”

3. Social media “Ego-centered,” relatively centralized “I” network Constant identity performance: “write themselves into being” (boyd, 2007) Variety of social network besides cocooned “community,” through metadata and indexing activity (tagging, friending, linking, commenting etc)

4. Photo-sharing social media (6 billions photos by Aug 2011) Folksonomy: user-generated indexing, collective knowledge building Relative tolerance for content (user-led regulation, flagging) Multi-layered social space(personal space, p2p network through “contact,” loose interaction via tag, comments, and group)

5. Flickr’s Multi-layered social network 2. Via photo (comment/favorite) 1. peer-to-peer contact Like it! Thanx 4. Flickr group 3. Via Tag Shared topic boat boat Join Modified the figure from Hansen, Shneiderman & Smith (2010)

6. Method Flickr as symbiotic assemblage of technocultural entities 1. Identify Semantic Landscape through quantitative tag analysis 2. Interrogate social interactions between photo-uploaders and viewers (discourse analysis) 3. Visual content analysis of individual photographs

7. Research Subjects photos retrieved through text (keyword) and tag 1051 photos retrieved via keyword “self-injury” 864 photos via tag search All photos are publicly accessible without Flickr account, marked as “Safe” Textual info & metadata attached to each photo were retrieved via Flickr API

8. Flickr photos tagged “selfinjury” Image generatedby www.taggalaxy.de

9. Keyword vs. Tag * Overlap btw 2 datasets = 508

12. Tag appearance frequency

13. Medical interpretation SI-awareness Photography Body Parts SI-specific term Tag network for “selfinjury” tag generated by Nodexl

14. Photo by SarahWynne Photo by inju Photo by Cherry C.

15. Discussion SI photographs as potential modality for self-disclosure that facilitates performative social communication SI as an act to deal with emotional pain in a visible mannermay provoke aesthetic impulse of self-injurers to visually narrativize their life Flickr, as a social site of display, seems to encourage SI photo uploaders to label and share their life freely, not necessarily bound to medical diagnosis

16. Works cited boyd, d. (2007). Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. In D. Buckingham (Ed.). MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume. Pp. 119-142. Hansen, D.,Shneiderman, B. & Smith, M. (2010)Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXLMorgan Kaufmann

17. Thank you!! Yukari Seko yukaseko@yorku.ca @doggyjelly Photo by DesolationSmile