online photo sharing as mediated communication

1

ONLINE PHOTO SHARING AS MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch S. Shyam Sundar

Media Effects Research Laboratory

College of Communications Pennsylvania State University

[email protected]

Paper presented to the Communication and Technology Division at the 60th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association

Singapore, June 22-26, 2010 The widespread use of services for uploading and storing digital pictures (e.g., Picasa, Flickr) has given rise to a new form of mediated communication: online photo sharing. This paper explores the motivations for viewing and uploading photos online, using the two-step procedure common in Uses-and-Gratifications (U&G) research. Focus groups revealed 42 motivations for sharing photos online. These motivations were converted into Likert-type scales that asked survey respondents (N = 460) to rate each one for its importance. A factor analysis revealed four classes of gratifications: Seeking and Showcasing Experiences, Website Affordances/Technological Reasons, Social Connection/Bonding, and Reaching Out/Bridging. These results suggest that photo sharing as a form of communication is driven more by social, rather than personal, needs, and is facilitated by a variety of interface features for uploading, viewing, downloading, tagging, commenting, and distributing images online, with important implications for theories of technology as well as user psychology

hy do we take pictures? Is it to document an event, capture a moment for posterity, or express one’s artistic

ability? Some scholars suggest that the primary motivation behind photography is something else: that of sharing something personal with others (Kindberg, Spasojevic, Fleck, & Sellen, 2005; Van House, Davis, Ames, Finn, & Viswanathan, 2005; Van House, Davis, Takhteyev, Ames, & Finn, 2004). Photography is ultimately a social medium, driven by the need to share one’s experiences with others. Since George Eastman’s invention of roll film and his Kodak company brought photography to the masses (“History of Kodak,” n.d.), friends and family have gathered to view photos of trips and special occasions as a supplement to hearing the stories about these events. With ever-improving technology and significant decreases in prices, more and more “ordinary people,” not just professional photographers or those with large budgets for equipment, can be active and influential photographers (Ritchin, 2007, 2008). With photography now largely in digital format, sharing photos has moved online to websites such as Flickr and Facebook. As of June 2009, Flickr hosted 3.6 billion photos (Wolk, 2009, June 15), and by October 2009, Facebook users

uploaded over two billion photos each month (“Facebook | Statistics,” n.d.). Sharing one’s photos online has become an expected norm, as 85% of digital camera owners think it is important to share photos with friends and family and 55% feel guilty if they do not share (“Digital Camera Users Feel Guilty for Not Sharing Photos,” 2008, November 6). Sharing photos via these online network sites is fundamentally different from sharing them in a physical setting, for a few key reasons. First, photo-sharing online is asynchronous, as individuals do not need to occupy the same space to view the photos, or even view them at the same time. Also, photo-sharing websites offer a wide variety of features that allow for new types of interaction, such as tagging or leaving notes on others’ photos (a feature available on Flickr). Finally, depending on a website’s or a user’s settings, online photos may be seen by more people than just the intended audience because they are often open to a wide network; the photographer may not always know who has viewed his/her photos. Previous research has set a good foundation for understanding the social uses of photography, but has not yet identified it as a distinct form of communication in the context of dense online

W

2

network sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr. These websites offer many features which can enhance photos and ways to share them, but perhaps most important, they provide a communication context around photo sharing. We argue that online photo sharing has allowed personal photography to become an independent medium for personal communication. The move to communicating via online photos is directly influenced by the capabilities of the technology (i.e., increased bandwidth and online storage space), involving modalities that are increasingly richer than text, traditionally the most common medium for online communication. Furthermore, Web 2.0 is built on user-generated content, providing greater exposure of one’s personal photography and serving as the motivating factor for sharing. Now that online photo-sharing has become a mainstream activity and also a spotlight feature on massive social network sites, it is worth understanding the appeal of this form of online communication and what social needs it is uniquely fulfilling. The goal of this paper is to explore why and how individuals are using online venues to view and upload photos. Personal Photography as Social Activity The term photography first appeared in the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 1839, when modern photography was popularized, and is defined as “the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface” (“photography - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary,” n.d.). This technical process of taking photos does not differ dramatically by the photographer’s intention, but the uses of photography are naturally quite diverse. As an art form, photos are to be admired for their style and content. They can function as records to enhance the experience of historical events, or serve as evidence. And as a personal medium, they create and maintain memories of people or events. While many forms of photography are public (e.g., when hung for sale in a gallery), personal photography has traditionally been private, and shared purposefully with others who have a connection to the content. The present research focuses on this specific form of personal photography: photos taken by individuals for the purpose of showing them to known others with the intent of sharing the content—an event, person, or object. Recognizing the unique importance of personal photography, Van House and colleagues (Van House et al., 2005; Van House, 2006; Van

House et al., 2004) have explored various broad uses for taking and sharing photos. From a number of interviews, Van House, et al. (2004) identified three higher-order social uses for personal photos: constructing personal and group memory, creating and maintaining social relationships, and self-expression and self-presentation. The authors found that while respondents enjoyed looking at their own photos to relive memories, viewing photos was also a very important social activity. Not surprisingly, events and family members were often the subjects of these photos, which were frequently used to chronicle a child’s life. The act of viewing these photos is important in maintaining current relationships particularly when people are spread out geographically and photos are used to keep up on each other’s daily lives. These photos allow for distant closeness, or “knowing about others, keeping others informed about oneself, without direct interaction” (Van House, 2006). Sharing these photos is also a way to share identities with family members and friends who are in the photos together. The concepts of self-expression and self-presentation are related, but Van House et al. differentiate the two in terms of motivation. Self-expression is about “giving voice to one’s unique view of the world” while self-presentation is about “influencing others’ view of oneself.” The photographer can represent herself through her photography using carefully constructed and selected self-portraits, while she may express herself by photographing particular content of interest that indicates what kind of person she is. In another study, Van House, et al. (2005) gave 60 participants cameraphones loaded with an MMM2 system developed by the researcher (see M. Davis et al., 2005) that automatically uploaded photos to a site containing albums for each user. During the first six weeks of the study, the participants uploaded a total of 1500 photos to the mobile system, and they shared 57% of these photos, often on specific topics on which they updated each other. The motivations for cameraphone use were identified as fulfilling five broad uses: creating and maintaining social relationships, personal and group memory, self-expression, self-presentation, and functional. These aligned closely with Van House et al.’s (2004) previous typology of personal photography motivations (constructing personal and group memory, creating and maintaining social relationships, and self-expression and self-presentation), with the addition of the functional

3

motive which referred to cameraphones being used in place of writing or other forms of communicating information or ideas. Kindberg, Spasojevic, Fleck, and Sellen (2005) found a similar set of motivations with 34 participants who captured a total of 295 photos on cameraphones during their study. The authors asked each participant to cite two primary reasons for taking each of these photos. This resulted in six motivations for capturing images on their phones, along two dimensions: Affective (e.g. emotional) vs. Functional (e.g., to support a particular task), and Social (intended for sharing) vs. Individual (not intended for sharing). Of the Social motivations, two were Affective: Mutual Experience (Images intended to enrich a shared, co-present experience), and Absent Friends or Family (Images intended for communication with absent friends or family); and two were Functional: Mutual Task (Images intended to share with people co-present in support of a task), and Remote Task (Images intended to support a task by sharing with remote family, friends, or colleagues). The two Individual motivations for photo capture were Personal Reflection (Affective; Images intended for personal reflection or reminiscing) and Personal Task (Functional; Images intended to support some future task not involving sharing). Most photos (97%) were taken at least partly for affective reasons, with slightly more (41%) taken for individual reasons such as reminiscing than for social reasons such as sharing an experience (35%). This highlights the intimate and relationship-oriented motivations for capturing images, even before sharing them. These results also indicate how motivations for taking and sharing photos may well be changing due to the affordances of today’s social technology. Technological Influences The exploration of socially-motivated photo sharing coincides with the growing popularity and accessibility of digital photography; camera prices have decreased dramatically in the last decade and many mobile devices on the market now feature built-in cameras. A timeline of digital camera releases in the past 15 years (“Digital Camera Timeline,” n.d.) illustrates the scale of digital camera growth: in 1995 just one digital camera appears on the list, versus 163 in 2009. The majority of cell phones now offered by major U.S. wireless carriers include cameras, some portable audio players such as the iPod Touch include cameras, and even the newest portable

video game systems such as the Nintendo DSi boasts photography capabilities, with two built-in lenses. These new platforms for photography have shifted its role in our daily lives. In their research on cameraphones, Van House, et al. (2005) found that constant access to the cameraphone changed the definition of what is considered photo-worthy; photo subjects were “ordinary,” of daily life. Also, given the low cost of taking photos this way, photography continued a transition from high art to common use. Furthermore, users were quite willing to share these photos online: 57% of all photos were shared. This speaks to another important influence of modern technology on how and what individuals communicate to each other; a point elaborated later. Similarly, Ito (2005) observed two couples that used cameraphones to share photos via mobile blogs (“moblogs”). Again, the photos were fairly ordinary, but served to give one partner current information on the other partner’s whereabouts. The moblog became a place to experience things “together,” in what Ito calls intimate visual co-presence, an “ambient, shared visual context that [users] are jointly aware of even when they are physically apart.” The technology-driven shift in photo use has become even more apparent as everyday digital photography moved from the cameraphone to Flickr and similar image-sharing websites. This ability to experience distant togetherness indicates that online photography is a powerful medium for intimacy and for maintaining relationships in the same way one might have done by sharing photos with friends in a traditional setting. Interestingly, however, the motivation for creating memories originally identified by Van House et al. (2004) is no longer as important in the age of increased digital sharing. With photos presented in dynamic streams on sites such as Flickr, most users have come to see these sites as social places where they can share the newest photos with others, and less as storage venues for archiving the photos that represent their memories (Van House, 2007). The features of these photo-sharing websites create novel uses, such as forming new relationships via photos on the site, an activity Lerman and Jones (2006) call “social browsing.” Negoescu and Gatica-Perez (2008) found that users do indeed use their photos to reach out to new contacts: 50.9% of users share at least one of their photos in a public group on Flickr; on average, they share 106 pictures (of each user’s 500 most recent photos analyzed) with public

4

groups, and they share their photos in an average of 49 different Flickr groups. These activities are likely influenced by the site’s particular features, norms, and online culture, and such motivations may vary by application. For instance, Facebook allows users to tag individuals who appear in the photos, which notifies these individuals and includes those photos on their profiles. Because of this feature, it is the norm to identify individuals in the pictures, whereas such details are not as important on Flickr, where tags refer to characteristics of the photos so that they can be classified into topic-oriented groups. While photos on either site can be annotated in whichever manner the user prefers, the particular features offered by each of these sites drives what become standard in that venue. With all the unique socially-oriented photo-sharing features that are added and modified (e.g., various uploading options, commenting systems, customizable privacy settings), motivations for sharing photos may continually change based on technology’s affordances. Online Content Sharing as Communication Together, distant closeness (Van House, 2006), intimate visual co-presence (Ito, 2005), and recent findings on moblogs (Van House et al., 2005) paint a picture of an emerging way to communicate: via shared virtual content. With the explosion of social media in the last few years, sharing media has moved from an Internet affordance to a primary online activity. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter have shifted the focus from connecting with friends to exchanging media and information with one’s online social network. For instance, Facebook’s status update feature that once simply asked “what are you doing?” on the page’s periphery is now the website’s main attraction and offers the ability to constantly update others’ homepages with photos, videos, applications, events, news, and a number of external media. Twitter was created to be nothing more than a tool to publicly post status updates, yet it is now rich with shared content, and is often the primary, if not the only, way many of its users interact. In the shift to online communication in the form of media exchange, the enjoyment of personal photography still depends on storytelling and social relationships; while Flickr was created specifically for photo-sharing and is likely the best known online photo application, Facebook is now rated as the top photo sharing application (“Facebook | Statistics,” n.d.), and possibly hosts

more photos than any other website to date. In fact, in his study on Facebook uses, Joinson (2008) identified a unique factor for photographs, which included viewing, sharing/posting, tagging, and being tagged in photos. Furthermore, the strongest relationship between any two factors was the correlation between photographs and Social Connection / Bonding, r = .62, p < .05. Uploading and viewing photos have now become one of the most common activities on a site that was not originally marketed as a photo-sharing site. Given this unexpected use of these networks, it is important to explore what needs individuals are seeking to fulfill with photo sharing. Uses and Gratifications of Online Photo Sharing Recent research on the motivations and uses of photo sharing shows that individuals are able to identify particular motivations for sharing photos with friends and family, such as the desire to share an experience, or to update others on their children’s activities (Van House et al., 2004). This is in line with “active-audience” theories such as uses and gratifications (Blumler & Katz, 1974; Rubin, 2002), which propose a purposive use of communication tools, with the goal of gratifying certain felt needs. However, research also shows that those sharing photographs online may be less aware of the deeper needs that these activities fulfill, such as identity creation and self-expression (Van House, 2007). The goal of the present research is to understand motivations at both of these levels; we seek to identify what particular things individuals do with photos online and what conscious as well as latent purposes these activities serve. Media interfaces that allow for sharing of personal photography are quite different from traditional media in terms of selection and use. While an individual may make a decision about which movie to watch, viewing others’ shared photos is likely not about seeking out the content, but about seeking out the user. Thus, gratifications satisfied via media can also be thought of as functions, or useful roles that media play in everyday life. An activity such as sharing photos online helps meet higher-order needs, such as bonding, which go beyond the instrumental use of the photos—the physical media—and employ them as a rich medium of interpersonal and group communication. Furthermore, sharing photos online goes beyond traditional photo sharing in that social networks have introduced new contexts. First,

5

photos can be and often are shared with strangers. On Flickr, for instance, photos are public by default and thus are viewable and searchable by all Internet users. Intentionally sharing with strangers may come from a set of motivations that are very different from those that drive sharing with friends and family. While the content of many of our photos hold meaning for interpersonal others, they may also be seen by certain users as worthy of “publication,” resulting in mass communication via one’s images. Another possibility with online sharing is that one is sharing with no one. Many shared photos may never reach anyone. At the very least this presents an incongruence between gratifications sought and gratifications obtained, making the nature of this type of media use an important consideration for uses and gratifications research. In this context, the study of media gratifications may need to move beyond identifying motivations to engage in certain content (so-called “content gratification”) and adopt a different way of examining the intentions and outcomes of photo sharing as an activity (“process gratification”) within a dynamic medium such as the Internet. This paper is a first step in understanding the individual motivations and also broader needs fulfilled by sharing photos online. Specifically, we seek to answer the following research questions:

RQ1: What are the motivations for

sharing photos online (uploading photos and viewing photos)?

RQ2: What are the broader functional uses of photo-sharing that drive users’ motivations?

RQ3: What website features are of importance in helping users share photos socially?

Motivations for online photo sharing were assessed using the two-step procedure that is recommended by uses-and-gratifications researchers. First, participants were asked to list their motivations for uploading or viewing photos online, and important uses of photo-sharing sites. Additional motivations were gathered from focus groups with these participants. Second, these motivations were converted to scales and a new group of participants rated the importance of each use of online photo sharing and photo-sharing sites. From these responses, a factor analysis extracted the main factors for sharing photos

online, revealing the broad psychological patterns underlying this popular activity.

Step 1: Qualitative Exploration of Motivations

Methods Participants. Twenty-two graduate students were recruited from a graduate lab group and a graduate seminar in Communications at a large university to participate in focus groups about their photo sharing behavior. The short open-ended questionnaire used in the focus groups was also sent to graduate students in the college through Facebook, and 11 responses were obtained. Thus a total of 33 individuals participated in this qualitative phase of the research. Procedures. The 22 individuals recruited from the research group and seminar participated in focus groups about their online photo sharing habits. They were first given a short questionnaire which asked whether they engage in online photo sharing, defined as “transferring your digital photos to online websites (such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, MySpace, Photobucket, SmugMug, Webshots) for the purpose of sharing them with other users to view, or viewing photos that others have uploaded on these sites.” They were also asked to list all the websites they use for sharing photos, and how often they used them to view photos and to upload photos, using a scale of “Never” to “Daily” for each activity. Next, participants were asked to answer the four open-ended questions about online photo sharing, adapted from the four questions asked by Joinson (2008) about Facebook use:

1. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about what you enjoy most about sharing photos online?

2. What other words describe what you enjoy about sharing photos online?

3. Using single, easy-to-understand terms, why do you share your photos online?

4. What uses of photo-sharing sites are most important to you?

After about five minutes, the researcher conducted a discussion on the participants’ responses, which were audio-recorded. The focus group portion

6

lasted approximately 30 minutes in the research group meeting and in the seminar meeting. Participants were probed further on their reasons for sharing photos online and using online photo-sharing sites in an effort to find all possible uses and motivations for these online activities. Following the focus groups, the paper questionnaires were collected. Those recruited from Facebook responded only to the questionnaire and did not participate in the focus group. Analysis. Responses to the four questions posed in the questionnaire were coded for online photo sharing motivations. First, a list was made of all reasons and important factors that participants provided for viewing photos, uploading photos, and using photo sharing websites. Then the audio recording from the focus groups were transcribed and also coded for reasons for sharing photos online. Next, similar

responses, e.g., “to see what my family is doing” and “to see what my family is up to,” were combined into broader motivations, and the number of times each of these types of reasons were mentioned was recorded. Results Analysis of the questionnaire responses and focus group sessions resulted in 42 distinct motivations for uploading photos, viewing online photos, and using photo sharing sites. The most common motivation for sharing photos was to Stay connected/maintain relationships (mentioned 21 times). Other common motivations were Ease of sharing, See what others are up to, Show others what I'm doing, Share my events/experiences, Bandwidth/speed/ unlimited space, Communication, and Entertainment/leisure/relaxing. See Table 1 for a list of all 42 motivations and the number of times each was mentioned.

Motivation Mentions Motivation Mentions

Stay connected/maintain relationships 21 Show off my talent 4

Ease of sharing 16 Express myself 3

See what others are up to 15 Ordering prints 3

Show others what I'm doing 14 Others are doing it 3

Share my events/experiences 13 Quality of photo 3

Bandwidth/speed/unlimited space 10 See new things 3

Communication 10 Sense of community 3

Entertainment/leisure/relaxing 10 Share common interests 3

Convenience 9 Vicariously experience others' events 3

Opinions/feedback 9 Batch uploading 2

Aesthetics/artwork 8 Captions 2

Memories 7 Closeness 2

Privacy settings 7 Inspiration 2

Tagging 7 Linking to photos for other uses 2

Commenting 6 See other's skills 2

Informative 6 Surveillance 2

Easy navigation of site 5 Catch up on missed events 1

Keep up on current events/trends/news 5 Cheering myself up 1

Self-presentation 5 Enhance storytelling 1

Editing features 4 Express my emotions 1

Reach wide audience 4 Find new people 1

Table 1: Motivations for Online Photo Sharing

7

Step 2: Survey and Factor Analysis of Motivations

Upon compiling this comprehensive list of motivations for viewing and uploading photos on public websites, we sought to gather quantitative data on the importance of each of these various motivations across a larger sample. The value of this second study lies in discovering how all of the possible motivations mentioned by various individuals fit together into distinct gratifications that fulfill higher-order needs. Methods Item generation. Each of the 42 motivations was converted to a questionnaire item, which asked respondents to rate the importance of each use of online photo-sharing on a Likert-Type scale (1=”Very Unimportant,” 7 =”Very Important”). Following a pre-test with 15 individuals, problematic questions were re-worded and some items were modified for clarity, resulting in a total of 44 motivations. The scale anchors were also changed when appropriate to match the wording for several items for sharing photos. Participants. Respondents were 460 undergraduate students recruited from two large communications courses in a large US university. The sample consisted of 268 (58.3%) females and 175 (38.0%) males (17 participants did not indicate their gender) who ranged in age from 17 to 37 (mean age = 19.79 years, SD = 1.62). The majority of participants were Freshmen (36.0%) and Sophomores (35.1%). Measures. Scale items were grouped into three categories: reasons for uploading photos online, reasons for viewing others’ photos online, and the importance of various photo sharing website features. Reasons for viewing photos. Participants were asked to respond to the item “The reason I view others’ photos online is” using the same Likert-type scale of 1 (”Not At All”) to 7 (”Very Much”). This measure consisted of 16 items: To see what my friends and family are doing in their daily lives; To catch up on events I missed; As a leisure activity, a way to relax; To gain information on something, such as places or events; As a source of inspiration; To keep up on current trends; To relive memories; To live vicariously through others’ experiences; To see new things; To see others’ photography skills; To feel a sense of community; To stay connected with others; To keep tabs on

others/monitor other people’s activities; To cheer myself up; So that I can feel closer to others; and I like to view photos as artwork. Importance of site features. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of several photo-sharing site features on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from “Very Unimportant” to “Very Important.” These 14 items were: Add captions to photos; Comment on photos; Tag photos (indicate what people or objects are present in the photos); Upload photos quickly; Upload several photos at one time; Ease of sharing photos; Ease of using the site to view photos; Photo-editing features (such as cropping or red eye removal); Ability to delete photos I have uploaded; Ability to link to photos for other uses; Ordering prints; Privacy settings; High quality of photos displayed; and Lots of storage space. Procedures. Respondents were recruited from courses for extra credit or research credit. An announcement was made in class about the study and an email reminder sent to students with a link to an online survey, hosted on SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com). Upon arriving at the website, participants saw an implied consent form and indicated their agreement to participate in the study by clicking “continue” on this page. On the questionnaire, they were first asked if they used any websites for sharing photos online (either uploading photos or viewing others’ photos). Those who answered “No” were taken directly to the demographics section. Those who answered “Yes” were asked which of 10 sites they used for photo-sharing (e.g., Flickr, Facebook, MySpace), and given space to list other websites. They were also asked to indicate how often they uploaded photos and how often they viewed photos, each on a scale of “Never” to “Daily.” Then, they were led to the aforementioned measures of reasons for uploading photos, viewing photos, and importance of various site features. Finally, participants were asked to provide demographics such as age, gender, major, and class standing. Results Photo Sharing Activity. The majority of participants (87.6%) stated that they currently use at least one website for sharing photos online. Those who stated that they do not do any online photo sharing were excluded from further analysis. Facebook was by far the most popular site for sharing photos, with 99% indicating that they use this website for this purpose. MySpace

8

was the second most popular site for sharing photos, with 26.1% of the sample using the site, and Photobucket third in popularity (12.4%). In terms of viewing others’ photos, the most popular responses were “Daily” (34.4%) and “A few times per week” (33.7%). Uploading photos was done much less frequently: the majority does so “A few times per month” (44.9%) or “A few times per year” (36.2%). Detailed results are listed in Table 2. Three participants who answered “Yes” to using websites for photo sharing but answered “Never” to both viewing and sharing were also excluded from further analysis, leaving a final sample of 400.

Percentage

Frequency View Others’

Photos Upload Photos

Daily 34.4 3.6

A few times per week 33.7 9.5

A few times per month 21.7 36.2

A few times per year 8.2 44.9

Never 2.0 5.5

Table 2: Frequency of online photo sharing The importance of the 44 motivations for online photo sharing ranged widely, with top reasons related to social activities such as “to see what my friends and family are doing in their daily lives” (M = 5.52, SD = 1.35) and the convenience of sharing online such as “ease of using the site to view photos” (M = 5.44, SD = 1.39). Meanwhile, least important motivations were those related to the artistic value of the photography, such as “I like to view photos as artwork” (M = 2.92, SD = 1.74) and “to see others’ photography skills” (M = 3.10, SD = 1.76). Factor Analysis. To identify the underlying reasons for the various photo-sharing activities, all 44 scale items were subjected to a factor analysis, which yielded 10 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, accounting for a total of 74.2% of the variance. These factors were rotated, using the Varimax method, for better differentiation of the items. When the 60-40 loading rule (primary loading of .60 or higher, with loadings on all other factors being below .40) was applied, only 24 of the original 44 items loaded on the 10 factors. Using Joinson’s (2008) more liberal decision criterion to include all items that load at .5 or greater with no cross-loading greater than .5 improved the factors somewhat,

but the factor structure was still weak. Specifically, three factors had low reliabilities. Aside from these problems, the 10 factors were conceptually difficult to interpret, thus this factor structure was deemed inappropriate for the data. Examination of the scree plot indicated that a 4-factor solution may best fit these data. Four factors were rotated, accounting for a total of 55.8% of the variance. The first factor had an eigenvalue of 14.68 and accounted for 33.36% of the variance, the second factor had an eigenvalue of 5.04 and accounted for 11.45% of the variances, the third factor had an eigenvalue of 2.85 and accounted for 6.5% of the variance, and the fourth factor had an eigenvalue of 2.02 and accounted for 4.59% of the variance. Using the .5 loading criterion, there were no cross-loadings, and only eight items did not load uniquely on any factor. Details of the factors are shown in Tables 3-6. Factor 1 (Table 3) contains items that are part of Seeking and Showcasing Experiences, or keeping up with what is happening in the world. Most of the items are about viewing photos; only two are about uploading photos.

Item Mean (SD) Loading

- To share common interests with others

4.17 (1.26) .52

- To show off my photography skills

3.13 (1.25) .55

- As a source of inspiration

3.27 (1.67) .76

- To keep up on current trends

3.44 (1.78) .76

- To live vicariously through others’ experiences

3.31 (1.77) .69

- To see new things 4.39 (1.59) .60

- To see others’ photography skills

3.10 (1.76) .63

- To feel a sense of community

3.40 (1.68) .78

- To keep tabs on others/monitor other people’s activities

4.02 (1.80) .58

- To cheer myself up 3.53 (1.80) .66

- So that I can feel closer to others

3.72 (1.75) .69

- I like to view photos as artwork

2.92 (1.74) .74

Note. Cronbach’s α = .89

Table 3: Factor 1: Seeking and Showcasing Experiences

9

Motivations such as “to keep tabs on others/monitor other people’s activities,” “to feel a sense of community,” and “to keep up on current trends” are network-driven motivations, which may be due to the venue in which most participants view photos online. 396 of the 400 participants (99%) stated that they use Facebook for photo-sharing activities, and 229 of these individuals (57.3%) use only Facebook and no other websites for photo sharing. Other items in this factor are still aspects of information seeking, but focus more on experiencing things, shown by motivations such as “to live vicariously through others’ experiences” and “to see new things.” Factor 2 (Table 4) contains only items about Website Affordances/Technological Reasons such as “ease of sharing photos” and “high quality of photos displayed.” Each of these items refers to an affordance of the website, or a feature that allows users to carry out a useful function (Norman, 1999). All of the included features were rated as moderately important—above the mid-point on the original rating scale—indicating that website features as a whole are very important in the motivation to share photos online.


- Tag photos (indicate what people/objects are present in the photos)

5.05 (1.56) .55

- Upload several photos at one time

5.31 (1.60) .81

- Upload photos quickly 5.12 (1.63) .80

- Ease of sharing photos 5.28 (1.46) .80

- Ease of using the site to view photos

5.44 (1.39) .79

- Photo-editing features (such as cropping or red eye removal)

4.27 (1.76) .65

- Ability to delete photos I have uploaded

5.41 (1.58) .61

- Ability to link to photos for other uses

4.27 (1.64) .54

- High quality of photos displayed

4.83 (1.69) .70

- Lots of storage space 4.87 (1.71) .64


Table 4: Factor 2: Website Affordances / Technological Reasons

Factor 3 (Table 5) is made up of items primarily concerned with Social Connection/Bonding, or maintaining a connection with important people in one’s life with motivations such as “to catch up on events I missed” and “to show my friends and family what I am doing in my daily life.” This factor is similar to Factor 1, but is more intimate. Whereas the first factor is about keeping up with a broad network of people and events, this factor is clearly more focused on friends, family, and memories. As a whole, the means for the items on this factor were higher than those on Factor 1, indicating that these social ties to certain individuals are a more important use of online photo-sharing than just broad network information.


- To show my friends and family what I am doing in my daily life

4.58 (1.26) .59

- To communicate with others

4.58 (1.14) .52

- To see what my friends and family are doing in their daily lives

5.52 (1.35) .87

- To catch up on events I missed

5.40 (1.35) .82

- As a leisure activity, a way to relax

4.79 (1.60) .61

- To gain information on something, such as places or events

4.75 (1.55) .74

- To relive memories 5.36 (1.41) .64

- To stay connected with others

5.08 (1.38) .70


Table 5: Factor 3: Social Connection / Bonding Factor 4 (Table 6) contains items about active Reaching Out/Bridging to the network. This factor is similar to Factor 1 in terms of its networking aspect; the two factors are strongly correlated: r = .59, p < .0001. Four of the six motivations on this factor are about uploading photos, rather than viewing them, and include reasons such as “to find new people” and “to get feedback on my photos.” Two site features appear on this factor, “add captions to photos” and “comment on photos,” which are about adding information to the photos that may provide a clearer context for an audience.

10


- To find new people 3.34 (1.34) .54

- Because many others I know are sharing their photos

4.26 (1.33) .65

- To get feedback on my photos

4.06 (1.37) .67

- To reach a wide audience with my photos

3.69 (1.31) .64

- Add captions to photos 4.26 (1.63) .53

- Comment on photos 4.42 (1.67) .57


Table 6: Factor 4: Reaching Out / Bridging These four factors represent the few high-order needs met by the many separate motivations that individuals list for sharing photos. While each of these factors represents a particular function for photo sharing in one’s life, they do not operate separately, and are quite highly correlated (Table 7).

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4

Factor 1 - .36 .50 .58

Factor 2 - .58 .53

Factor 3 - .54

Factor 4 -

Note. Each correlation is significant, p < .0001

Table 7: Correlations Between Factors Of the four factors that emerged, the largest factor (Seeking and Showcasing Experiences, 12 items) refers to a dynamic need to keep up with the world by both searching for and providing information. The second factor (Website Affordances/Technological Reasons, 10 items) indicates the importance of various website features that support the activity of photo sharing. Factor 3 (Social Connection/Bonding, 8 items) and Factor 4 (Reaching Out/Bridging, 6 items) both capture relational aspects of photo sharing, signaling gratifications related to maintaining close relationships and forming new relationships, respectively.

Discussion

The results of the factor analysis show strong support for the notion that people use photography for social purposes, and increasingly use online venues to communicate and build

relationships via photos. Seeking and Showcasing Experiences (Factor 1) is mostly about experiencing what others are doing, while also participating in this sharing of experiences. This factor features an aspect of surveillance and even entertainment, especially with the inclusion of the item “to cheer myself up.” The third factor, Social Connection/Bonding, is particularly strong in showing that one of the main reasons to share photos online is to keep up on each other’s lives, relive memories, and to communicate. It is similar to the first factor, but driven more by a desire for close relationships than for merely keeping up with life events. It exhibits very high reliability and its items have the highest means, overall, of any of the factors. This factor parallels the social photography uses of constructing memories and maintaining relationship identified by Van House et al. (2004). Interestingly, the needs for self-expression and self-presentation do not emerge as a separate factor; they are seen as means for creating new connections or keeping up with the world. In this case, communication about oneself through photos may be of less important than using photos to reach out to others and understand as well as experience shared meanings. One distinction between the Seeking and Showcasing Experiences and Reaching Out/Bridging factors is in terms of giving and receiving. In organizational network literature, knowledge sharing has been defined as a mutual activity, recognizing the roles of knowledge and donating and knowledge collecting (de Vries, van den Hooff, & de Ridder, 2006). Knowledge donating is the act of communicating one’s personal intellectual capital to others, and knowledge collecting is the act of consulting others to get them to share their intellectual capital. Seeking and Showcasing Experiences is largely a form of knowledge collecting with a sense of “watching” others’ lives, while Reaching Out/Bridging is more like knowledge donation, based on the more intimate nature of the information exchange in this factor. These two factors highlight the need to conceptualize photo sharing as a reciprocal activity in which both uploading and viewing are forms of sharing. Perhaps because of this particular sample, which predominantly used Facebook for photo-sharing, the factors are clearly network-driven. Social Connection/Bonding (Factor 3) and Reaching Out/Bridging (Factor 4) are focused on building social capital through photography, at different levels. Putnam (2001) distinguishes

11

between two forms of social capital, bridging and bonding capital, which are reflected in the three social factors in this research. Bridging social capital refers to weak connections between people who may provide useful information for each, but are not emotionally close. Bonding social capital is a closer connection between individuals, such as family and friends. The Social Connection/Bonding factor is a form of bonding capital, a way to stay close to important individuals through photos, while the Reaching Out/Bridging is a way of building bridging capital, or connecting to others in ways that expand one’s network in useful ways. Finally, Website Affordances/Technological Reasons (Factor 2) showcase the importance of various site features in online photo-sharing. These 10 items indicate that users seek convenience, efficiency, and control on photo-sharing sites. They are also interested in features that allow them to add information to photos and interact with others via these photos, such as the ability to comment and to tag friends. The emphasis that individuals have placed on how convenient and responsive these websites must be to meet their photo sharing needs aligns with the assumptions of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1989). Two fundamental factors of this model are perceived usefulness, defined as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance,” and perceived ease of use, defined as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort.” Participants specifically note the importance of a site that makes it easy to share photos (M = 5.28) and to view photos (M = 5.44). They also mention a number of specific features that add to the usefulness of these sites, such as photo editing capabilities, and the ease of using these sites, such as the ability to upload several photos at a time. There is no question that the dramatic popularity of online photo sharing is driven by the ease of use of interface features facilitating the sharing, right from the uploading stage to tagging and commenting. The MAIN model (Sundar, 2008) argues that each of these features will hold a special meaning for users, because their presence on the interface will trigger heuristics (or mental shortcuts) about the nature of images. For example, the tagging affordance may signal a call for “bridging” (i.e., initiating social connection) while the cropping feature may lead users to think about self-presentation issues. Future research should systematically investigate how the

affordances on photo sharing sites enable the showcasing, bonding, and bridging gratifications identified in the other three factors. Our study’s findings have important implications for Uses & Gratifications and similar audience activity theories. The factor structure from this data indicates that beyond the simple motivations people list for sharing photos, doing so also fulfills greater needs; in this case, providing an understanding of one’s social world. As Web 2.0 becomes mainstream, it is necessary to recognize that interactive, user-driven media not only fulfill immediate needs, but offer broader useful functions that may build and change over time. Additionally, as technology evolves and a medium’s affordances grow or change, the motivations for using that medium will evolve as well. While sharing photos online may have initially served as entertainment, it is likely to become a regular form of communication just as email has and as social network sites will. Thus, gratifications that people seek from a medium at any time are dependent on what the medium can offer at that point, while new gratifications which were not previously known can be obtained and expected in future use of the medium, or in other media. From this study, it is evident that social connections, not personal promotion, constitute the backbone of online photo sharing. Gratifications related to social connection could have been dictated in part by the ease by which the sites allow users to share their photographs with others. As these interfaces offer newer affordances, gratifications expected and obtained from photo sharing sites may also change. Alternatively, the larger gratifications may remain the same, with only their manifestations undergoing change with evolution of user interaction of new technologies. There are a number of things the current research did not address, such as the content of the photography. Based on the results, the details of the content were not of great importance because photos were a vehicle for social interaction. However, exploring the types of objects, people, or events captured in these photos may lead to a richer understanding of online photo-sharing activity. Other details not assessed include who individuals shared photos with, and whose photos individuals viewed. In terms of using photos to maintain social relationships, it would be of interest to quantify the amount of pictures that do contain people, or maybe other subjects that allow for the formation or reinforcement of social relationships. A few

12

participants noted that they use Twitter for photo-sharing, a site which was not considered for photo-sharing in the design of this research. Twitpic is Twitter’s image venue, which encourages users to send photos via their cameraphones, and is sure to grow in popularity as it offers the convenience of texting photos from one’s phone. Given Twitter’s networking context, social capital motivations for sharing photos online may increase in importance as more users join the site. More broadly, future research should assess what types of photos individuals are sharing in various venues, with various audiences, and the types of gratifications they hope to obtain with these sharing activities, as well as what features of the photo content as well as the user interface may lead to social outcomes such as bonding as well as other known outcomes of mediated communication, such as information, entertainment, and persuasion. Further exploration should also include a diversity of user groups given that the sample here consists primarily of college-age adults who engage in online photo-sharing, mostly on Facebook. This will provide us a well-rounded understanding of online photo sharing sites, enabling us to launch theory-based tests of human communication in this relatively new venue.

References

Blumler, J., & Katz, E. (1974). The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratifications research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS quarterly, 13(3), 319-340.

Davis, M., Van House, N., Towle, J., King, S., Ahern, S., Burgener, C., et al. (2005, April). MMM2: Mobile media metadata for media sharing (p. 1338). Proceedings of the CHI'05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.

Digital Camera Timeline. (n.d.). Digital Photography Review. Retrieved October 31, 2009, from http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/timeline.asp

Digital camera users feel guilty for not sharing

photos. (2008, November 6). Business Wire. Retrieved October 31, 2009, from http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20081106006736&newsLang=en

Facebook | Statistics. (n.d.). Facebook. Retrieved October 31, 2009, from http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

History of Kodak. (n.d.). Kodak. Retrieved October 31, 2009, from http://www.kodak.com/global/en/corp/historyOfKodak/historyIntro.jhtml?pq-path=2/8/2217/2687

Ito, M. (2005). Intimate visual co-presence. Paper presented at the Workshop on Pervasive Image Capture and Sharing, 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Tokyo, Japan.

Joinson, A. N. (2008). Looking at, looking up or keeping up with people?: Motives and use of Facebook. In Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1027-1036), ACM.

Katz, E., Haas, H., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). On the use of the mass media for important things. American Sociological Review, 38(2), 164-181.

Kindberg, T., Spasojevic, M., Fleck, R., & Sellen, A. (2005). I saw this and thought of you: Some social uses of camera phones (pp. 1545-1548). Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM.

Lerman, K., & Jones, L. (2006). Social browsing on Flickr. Paper presented at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.

Negoescu, R., & Gatica-Perez, D. (2008). Analyzing flickr groups (pp. 417-426). Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Content-Based Image and Video Retrieval, ACM.

Norman, D. A. (1999). Affordance, conventions, and design. Interactions, 6(3), 38-43.

photography - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster OnLine. Retrieved October 31, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/photography

13

Putnam, R. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Clearwater, FL: Touchstone Books.

Ritchin, F. (2007). We are all photographers now! The rapid mutation of amateur photography in the digital age. Aperture, 189, 20-21.

Ritchin, F. (2008). After Photography. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Rubin, A. (2002). The uses-and-gratifications perspective of media effects. Media effects: Advances in theory and research, 2, 525-548.

Van House, N., Davis, M., Ames, M., Finn, M., & Viswanathan, V. (2005). The uses of personal networked digital imaging: an empirical study of cameraphone photos and sharing (p. 1856). Presented at the CHI'05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.

Van House, N. (2006). Distant closeness: Cameraphones and public image sharing. Paper presented at the UBICOMP'06 PICS Workshop.

Van House, N. (2007). Flickr and public image-sharing: Distant closeness and photo exhibition (p. 2722). Proceedings of the CHI'07 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.

Van House, N., Davis, M., Ames, M., Finn, M., & Viswanathan, V. (2005). The uses of personal networked digital imaging: An empirical study of cameraphone photos and sharing (p. 1856). Proceedings of the CHI'05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.

Van House, N., Davis, M., Takhteyev, Y., Ames, M., & Finn, M. (2004). The social uses of personal photography: Methods for projecting future imaging applications [Electronic Version], from http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~vanhouse/van%20house_et_al_2004b%20.pdf

de Vries, R., van den Hooff, B., & de Ridder, J. (2006). Explaining knowledge sharing: The role of team communication styles, job satisfaction, and performance beliefs. Communication Research, 33(2), 115.

Wolk, D. (2009, June 15). Future of Open Source: Collaborative Culture. Wired. Retrieved October 30, 2009, from http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/06/dp_opensource_wired0616

Zillmann, D. (1988). Mood management through communication choices. American Behavioral Scientist, 31(3), 327-340.

online photo sharing as mediated communication

Documents