From Preserving to Sharing
The relationship between photography and photographer has come a long way. In almost 200 years’ time, the camera has grown from a plain box accessible exclusively to a small number of professionals to what it is now, a high-tech mini-computer found in today’s smartphones; 2.87 billion people are estimated to own a smartphone device by 2020 (Statista, 2019). The person who is credited with putting cameras into the hands of everyone was George Eastman, the founder of Kodak. By the 1950s, Kodak pretty much owned the US amateur film market, with a share of almost 70 percent. For three-quarters of the twentieth century, Kodak’s success in dominating its industry was not only in developing a new technology, but in creating a completely new mass market. (Cambridge) Kodak is the company that made photography one of the most popular pastimes around the world and which greatly influenced the way we see things—the way we captured our everyday life experiences. ‘You press the button, we do the rest’; these were the words of Kodak’s first slogan that at the time, evoked great emotion. The advertising campaigns established the need to preserve ‘significant’ moments such as family events and holidays, labelled as ‘Kodak moments’. Women were their main target, as women would represent the act of preserving moments of domestic bliss; it was a housewife’s ‘duty’ per se to record the family’s evolution and growth. On the other side of the lens was the other half of the moment, the subject—birthday parties, holidays, sporting events, and family vacations. Kodak played a big role in converting travel to tourism, the idea of ‘not bringing back pictures from your vacation you might as well not have gone’ began to roll out. Photography was all about sentiment, preserving valuable and blissful moments, and then in 1981, the digital camera arrived.
From preserving images in printed photo albums to sharing digital images via email and social media platforms, Kodak was blind to the fact that customer behaviours and preferences change. What they needed and failed to create; a new business model for an environment in which people do not ‘preserve memories’, but share experiences. Digital Transformation is among the most important movements in recent business history. It is what reflects the evolution of business models, processes, and supporting systems to more effectively compete in a digital economy, while also optimising how organisations work. Digital is only going forward and is not really going to regress anytime soon. It is what unites people across generations, interests, geography, and aspirations. Most importantly, it is what changes behaviour, preferences, expectations, and this is inevitable.
The camera has evolved from a popular pastime to a digital gadget, and quickly turned into an everyday tool, leveraging the way we share our experiences. Another great tool that leveraged our way of sharing is no other than social media platforms. Combined, they become a great part of our culture and the way we interact with our offline/online world.
The Culture in Sharing
Since Kodak introduced to us to the necessity of capturing moments, we have been consumed by it. Thanks to social media, this photo-sharing experience has never been easier and has been utilised more than ever. Per day, 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram and 300 million users use the ‘stories’ feature daily (Lister, 2019). What is the reason behind all this and why are we so consumed with sharing to this extent? The answer, in short, is that we love to talk about ourselves. In a normal conversation, a human devotes about 30-40 percent to talking about themselves and online, those percentages scale up to about 80 percent (Seiter, 2019). Just viewing your own social media profile can increase your self-esteem and it has never been easier to communicate and express ourselves in a more construct and refined way. This is what psychologists refer to as ‘self-presentation: positioning yourself the way you want to be seen’. There is a possible explanation for this, explained by the psychologist Carl Rogers, arguing that our personalities are composed of a ‘real self’ (who we really are) and an ‘ideal self’ (who we want to be). With this said, the content that we share online is a reflection of our ‘ideal self’. For example, sharing an article might endorse you as a knowledgeable person, a funny meme as a person with a sense of humour, and a picture of you in a museum of someone with artistic taste.
As social creatures, we are naturally inclined to form and maintain social relationships and communicating online enriches this desire. Researchers also theorise that we are motivated to share content online in order to feel a greater sense of belonging (Shutterstock, 2015). In a social media sharing study conducted by The New York Times, 68 percent of respondents said they share to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about (The New York Times Customer Insight Group, n.d.). We all appreciate good content, and sometimes we want to share it to bring value and entertainment to others. In The New York Times study, 94 percent of respondents said that they carefully consider how the information they share will be useful to the recipient and 69 percent share information because it allows them to feel more involved in the world (The New York Times Customer Insight Group, n.d.). Staying in touch with friends in our busy lives has been made easier for us today as we can quickly share a funny meme, a link to an event, or a message to purely gossip. The reason why people post content is, in a way, an expression to call out for feedback, meaning that almost every human being needs social reinforcement.
In a person-to-person conversation, you act on and adapt to visuals (body language, eye contact, facial expressions) and auditory information (speech, language, slang), processing the information back and forth both consciously and unconsciously. In the digital world, text only conveys one message, emojis may too help give the text wider understanding, but the message is still limited as in real-life. Pictures are a richer type of content than text, videos are even more. They not only convey a message but also a glimpse of the context, the mood, etc. Visual content is a greater way to document a ‘real’ social interaction or moment on the digital realm—the same way it all started with Kodak. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is a statement known and used for years, but it has never been more applicable as it is now. Looking at an image can help our brains absorb large and complicated amounts of data in a quicker way than reading text. Instagram is one of the many booming social media platforms that are all mainly image-based; even Twitter, which was originally a platform for just a limited amount of characters per tweet, has now evolved to a more image-based platform. Today we share more content, from more sources, with more people, more often, and more quickly. With that said, we want information fast and to understand it even faster.
References
Lister, M. (2019). 33 Mind-Boggling Instagram Stats & Facts for 2018. [online] Wordstream.com. Available at: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/04/20/instagram-statistics [Accessed 26 Aug. 2019].
Seiter, C. (2019). The Psychology of Social Media: Why We Like, Comment, and Share Online. [online] Buffer. Available at: https://buffer.com/resources/psychology-of-social-media [Accessed 26 Aug. 2019].
Shutterstock. (2014). Why We Prefer Pictures: It's the Way That We're Wired. [online] Shutterstock Blog. Available at: https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/why-we-prefer-pictures-its-the-way-that-youre-wired [Accessed 26 Aug. 2019].
Shutterstock. (2015). The Psychology Behind Why We Share on Social Media. [online] Shutterstock Blog. Available at: https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/the-psychology-behind-why-we-share-on-social-media [Accessed 26 Aug. 2019].