Fostering Critical Identities Through Social Media Archival Images

Project Information

IMACTIS

Grant agreement ID: 896835

DOI

10.3030/896835

Project closed

EC signature date 24 February 2020

Start date 1 April 2020

End date 31 March 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 166 320,00

EU contribution

€ 166 320,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IMACTIS (Fostering Critical Identities Through Social Media Archival Images)

Reporting period: 2020-04-01 to 2022-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project "IMACTIS - Fostering Critical Identities Through Social Media Archival Images" aimed to analyze identity-related images on social networks (YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, Facebook) and to propose a set of critical strategies for citizens and other social actors for building identity narrations while taking advantage of the specific resources of visual languages.
The two conceptual and methodological cores that animated the project concern, on the one hand, the disciplines of visual semiotics and rhetoric, both engaged in the effort to overcome the verbo-centric approach to the study of images, and, on the other hand, the concept of archive, which was used as a filter to make a comparison between different types of image collections with respect to the construction, representation, and transformation of identities on social networks.
The first disciplinary effort was to move beyond the “broadcast” approaches to the study of images. These approaches range from art history to media studies and art aesthetics, and are characterized by their almost exclusive study of images produced by artists or professionals, while the remainder of visual productions are most often collected under the label of 'amateur images', forming a heterogeneous and undervalued subgroup. In contrast, IMACTIS rather proposes a semio-rhetorical approach, because all social actors - citizens, institutions, and of course also professionals and artists - produce and disseminate images on a daily basis on social networks, giving rise to various communicational frameworks in which different communities, different rhetorical purposes, different genres, and different “visual dialects” are developed, each with its own specificity. This is why IMACTIS has brought into dialogue semiotics, rhetoric, media studies, image sciences, and some elements of computer science in order to examine the expressive and social diversity of image production and dissemination.
As for the concept of the archive, its heuristic value concerns both the collections of images disseminated on a daily basis on social networks and the ability to compare them with images produced in the past. Digital encoding has in fact made it possible for the first time to access collections of contemporary images that are disseminated and exchanged every day by all social actors. The concept of archive has been used to compare contemporary image collections on social networks – in their genres and particularities – with images from the past and from different societal domains (photographic and pictorial art, cinema).
This project also analyzed a heterogeneous set of image corpora: a corpus of found footage videos in which identity is both constructed and narrativized through the languages of images and in particular of archival footage, notable cases of identity narrations on social networks, and the tradition of the portrait in photographic and pictorial art.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Overall, IMACTIS has produced the following scientific and non-academic results:
• 7 accepted articles plus one under publication and one under evaluation. Among the papers, all available in open access, three contributions were published in three of the most important academic journals in the field of semiotics, image sciences, and digital humanities: Semiotica (DeGruyter), Visual Communication (SAGE), and New Techno-Humanities (Elsevier).
• The IMACTIS Research Seminar was organized at the University of Liège: 8 conferences in total and 16 researchers, working in the fields of media studies, art history, digital humanities, and digital epistemology, were invited.
• A special issue in preparation and already accepted for the journal Visual Communication which will publish the most important papers of the IMACTIS seminar.
• The monograph on social networks Semiotics of Social Media. Images, Faces, Identities will be published at the end of the year by the publisher Aracne.
• The international symposium “Augmented Images — New Challenges in the Era of Big Data Algorithms and Digital Environments”, will be held at the University of Liège on the 6th and 7th of October 2022.
• Two master’s courses dedicated to the project’s topics, the first at the University of Liège, the second at the University of Turin (fully available online): a) “Séminaire interdisciplinaire d'épistémologie quantitative et qualitative de l'archive”; b) “Filosofia della Comunicazione”.
• Participation in 5 international conferences in Paris, Bucharest, Rome, LaValle (Tuscany), and Amsterdam.
• 2 radio broadcasts (researchers’ night podcast, RCF Radio)

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The IMACTIS project contributes to a better understanding of social networks, of the mechanisms of value construction within these virtual environments, as well as to the development of a more critical use of the language of images by all social actors (professionals, institutions, citizens). These results could be exploited in policy-making activities, particularly with regard to identity narrations that are developed by politicians and other social actors. Thanks to the repertoire of critical strategies developed during the project, alternative and positive forms of social narration could be developed by exploiting the formal repertoire in order to promote positive and progressive issues in the fields of the environment, heritage, and gender equality.

The following advances over the state of the art were obtained:
1) a new epistemology of visual documents articulated into a compositional dimension (the figures, shapes, colors, and dialogical configurations: everything that is internal to the images), a mediatic dimension (the materials, technical formats, resolution, production devices), and a rhetorical dimension (the genres and the rhetorical acts performed within, through, and upon the images).
2) a theory capable of accounting for the construction, management and transformation of values on social networks. Social networks have been reconceived as distinctive semio-rhetorical spaces based on an unprecedented attention and gift economy in which there is a paradoxical experiential and algorithmic regression in the management of social interactions. In particular, the project approached the way in which quantitative appreciation is systematically transformed into reputational, monetary, and aesthetic values.
3) an original reinterpretation of Paul Ricœur’s theory of identity aimed at understanding identity narrations realized through the images of social networks. Identity is the result of the articulation between two polarities into an identity narration: on the one hand, the character, the habits, the physical appearance; on the other, the ethical values, the figures chosen as heroes, the innovative behaviors.
4) an analysis of the new genres of identity-related images on social media, such as selfies, face reveals, reaction videos, live streaming. These new genres of images are transforming the presence of actors in the public sphere and are impacting all social domains (art, politics, entertainment, fashion).
5) the integration of the theory of identity with the hypothesis of a dramaturgy of the face that draws upon the tradition of studies on artistic portraiture, and the transformation of the film actor into a fictional character.
6) the construction of a repertoire of strategies in order to build identity narrations through the expressive resources of images.

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