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Digital Journalism
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News Images on Instagram
Eddy Borges-Rey
To cite this article: Eddy Borges-Rey (2015) News Images on Instagram, Digital Journalism, 3:4,
571-593, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2015.1034526
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NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM
The paradox of authenticity in hyperreal
photo reportage
Eddy Borges-Rey
This article examines the extent to which the online photo-sharing service Instagram assists professional
and citizen photojournalists in the performative construction of a hyperreality in
accordance with Baudrillard’s theory. Based on a visual analysis of the Instagram photo feeds
of six citizen photojournalists and six professional photojournalists, this research aims to identify
the various simulations and discourses used by professional and citizen photojournalists
alike to stage their photographs and to characterise the differences demarcating the professional–amateur
divide. It also examines how the interaction between technology, photojournalistic
practices and subjectivity stimulates the mediations and negotiations that condition the
construction of this hyperreality. The study demonstrates that by producing, uploading, sharing,
commenting upon and promoting these altered photo reportages, the Instagram community
inadvertently creates a hyperreal depiction of the world that challenges both, the sense of
authenticity characteristic of citizen journalism and amateur photography, as well as the realism
to which professional photojournalism has historically subscribed. Moreover, it argues that
in order to create their images, Instagram photojournalists use a series of aesthetic conventions
and performative discourses that correspond to their roles as either amateurs or professionals.
Nevertheless, each group tries to simulate the aforementioned conventions and discourses of
the other in an attempt to get closer either to the sense of amateurish authenticity or to professional
neatness. As a result, this paradoxical interaction has the potential to transform today’s
visual imagery by means of a simulated reality that needs further explanation.
KEYWORDS algorithmic photography; authenticity; citizen journalism; hyperrealism; Instagram;
photojournalism; simulation
Introduction
As citizens increasingly participate in the process of recording everyday life with
the aid of new portable, low-cost, easy-to-use technologies, the very notion of realism
that historically shaped contemporary professional photojournalism has come under
challenge. Through these innovative “shoot-and-share” technologies (Bate 2013a, 37)
that afford in situ photo-retouching, amateur photographers have made a substantial
contribution to the reporting of crises by virtue of varying modalities of eyewitness
accounts (Allan 2009, 2013a; Ande´n-Papadopoulos 2014; Ande´n-Papadopoulos and
Pantti 2011; Mortensen 2011a; Patrick and Allan 2013; Zelizer 2007) that audiences
Digital Journalism, 2015
Vol. 3, No. 4, 571–593, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2015.1034526
Ó 2015 Taylor & Francis
perceive as being more authentic than professional reports (Allan 2006;
Ande´n-Papadopoulos and Pantti 2011; Pantti and Bakker 2009; Puustinen and Seppanen
2011; Williams, Wardle, and Wahl-Jorgensen 2011). This sometimes active, sometimes
accidental documenting of reality seemingly contributes to the modification not only of
the canons of contemporary social imaginaries but also of the many traditional practices
that have historically defined photojournalism.
This article examines the way in which professional and citizen photojournalists
articulate a set of simulations through their use of Instagram.1
Moreover, it aims to
determine the extent to which the standardisation on the use of predefined filters,
post-processing techniques and other photo-retouching options in Instagram enables
photojournalists to produce simulations that transform our interpretation of reality to
the extent that it creates a hyperreality.
This article contributes to current debates on witnessing in news reporting by
connecting the theories of simulation and hyperreality to notions of algorithmic photography
in order to explore how citizen photojournalists enact a performative discourse
with the potential to challenge the contemporary notions of realism and
authenticity that have historically underpinned professional photojournalism.
Rafting the Rough Waters of the Professional–Amateur Divide
Contemporary efforts to articulate an ontology of citizen journalism aim to theorise
a series of reportorial activities that (1) were performed by non-conventional
actors; (2) were facilitated by “informational lo-fi popular ‘shoot-and-share’ technologies”
(Bate 2013a, 37); (3) have filled a professional gap during war or crisis events
(Allan 2009, 24–25); and (4) often compete with professional journalists for space on
the news agenda (Allan 2006, 131; Ande´n-Papadopoulos 2014, 759; Mortensen 2011b).
Following a period of consolidation on the field, an emergent ecology appears to follow
two main lines of inquiry. One focuses on an eyewitness category (Zelizer 2007)
in which individuals who fortuitously bear witness to crisis events record and share
their experiences (Allan 2006, 152). The other line of inquiry focuses on the categories
of citizen camera-witness (Ande´n-Papadopoulos 2014), citizen witness (Allan 2013a)
and eyewitness picture producer (Mortensen 2011a)—individuals who deliberately
engage, as part of their civic duty, in documenting events as they unfold and
subsequently disseminate a more reflexive evidential testimony.
The element that arguably defines the ethos of each modality is how conscious
participants are of their involvement in the act of witnessing. Ande´n-Papadopoulos
(2014, 756), for instance, distinguishes between “mundane acts of recording” and “the
embodied risk of filming as resistance to brutal repression”. Allan (2013a, 174–175), conversely,
differentiates between three modalities with blurring boundaries between one
another: an indifferent viewer, listener or reader who may feel a sense of civic commitment
when responding to breaking news of distant suffering, an individual suddenly
involved in unexpected events who feels compelled to document what is unfolding
around them to share it or to render it affectively meaningful, and finally, “the citizen
self-reflexively engaged in purposeful witnessing”.
Each modality, remarks Allan (2013a, 74–175), will produce varying responses from
professional journalists formerly commissioned to bear witness on behalf of their publics,
572 EDDY BORGES-REY
provoking in many of them feelings of anxiety, anger or rejection based on the premise
that amateur reporting undermines the quality of the public sphere and journalism’s
essential role as the Fourth Estate (McNair 2011, 42). Although scholars evidence the
unlikelihood of professionals being displaced by amateurs, arguing that the relationship
between both collectives is of mutual complementarity (Bruns 2011, 137; Patrick and Allan
2013, 122), the widespread use of citizen imagery by mainstream media in times of crises
(e.g. the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013) may suggest otherwise. Others, in turn,
have stated that citizen journalism is heavily mediated by professional mainstream media
(Ande´n-Papadopoulos and Pantti 2011, 11) and that in many cases media organisations
use them as labour force (Vujnovic et al., cited in Jones and Salter 2012, 30).
Concerns over citizen journalism’s increasing prevalence are further tangible
amongst professional photojournalists (Ke˛dra 2012), who frequently use normative,
aesthetic and ethical entitlements to distance themselves from citizen photojournalists
(Allan 2013b, 198) in the interests of safeguarding their authoritative position. Interestingly,
Mortensen’s (2014a, 721) research revealed that the quality of citizen-shot photos
was not as dramatically different as professionals might suggest, evidencing citizens’
clear understanding of professional values to an extent that “amateur images are the
only consumer-created content that is occasionally given a similar status as professional
material” (Pantti and Bakker 2009, 485–486). Despite citizen photojournalists’ apparent
adherence to professional normative values, it is those mere accidents of presence
experienced by them as well as the dramatic character embedded in their eyewitness
reports that seems to appeal deeply to audiences once they reach mainstream news
(Ande´n-Papadopoulos and Pantti 2011, 9–10 Pantti and Bakker 2009).
For instance, Puustinen and Seppanen (2011, 189–190) conducted 30 qualitative
interviews with readers of print and online newspapers in Finland to explore their views
on trustworthiness of news photographs. Their findings suggest that audiences perceive
“amateur images as equally trustworthy or even more trustworthy than photos
taken by professional photographers”. Similarly, research by Williams, Wahl-Jorgensen,
and Wardle (2011, 207) evidences that audiences appreciate the sense of emotional
authenticity and realism conveyed by amateur audio-visual material, as opposed to the
conventionally detached frames used by professionals. Allan echoes Williams,
Wahl-Jorgensen, and Wardle’s findings alluding to the “raw” immediacy of citizen
imagery, which challenge impersonal and conventional frames, rules and ethics of
mainstream journalism by introducing disruptive ways of seeing (Allan 2014, 146). In
Mortensen’s (2014b, 31–32) comparison of the ethics of citizen and professional photojournalists,
the author found that each collective perceived themselves as behaving
more ethically than the other, whilst being rather sceptical about the ethics of their
counterparts. It is perhaps this diverging—and often counteracting—way in which professional
and citizen photojournalists perceive their counterpart’s ethical underpinnings
which is the factor that decidedly detaches one from the other.
Photographic Realism, Authenticity and Authority
Images produced by varying modalities of eyewitness enact a perceived immediacy
and authenticity, as they appear consonant with what audiences believe to be firsthand
recordings of events as they truly unfolded. This shared sense of proximity
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 573
between amateurs and their audiences, Ahva and Pantti (2014, 331) argue, has spatiotemporal,
emotional and strategic implications. It is precisely because of this strategic
use of amateur imagery by news organisations who seek to improve proximity with
their audience (331) that many of the most iconic images2
of significant crisis events in
the world have been produced by citizens and other non-conventional actors (Ande´nPapadopoulos
and Pantti 2011).
The “certificate of presence” (Barthes, cited in Te´tu and Touboul 2014) that the
photograph confers, what Allan calls “the authority of presence, a situational imbrication
of ‘here and now’” (Allan 2013a, 9–10), is what provides a robust eyewitnessing
viewpoint, and consequently, authenticity and authority (Zelizer 2007, 425). Allan argues
that moving and still images are compelling and “judged to be more authentic”
because they are “dim, grainy and shaky, but more importantly, because they [document]
an angle to an event as it was actually happening” (Allan 2006, 152). Mortensen
(2014a, 707–708) also refers to the distinctive aesthetics that make amateur imagery
more authentic. For instance, a tendency to centre the subject in the middle of the
frame or to employ other unconventional framings, frequently blurred and shot from
further distances to avoid intrusion or, as Bate (2013b, 86–87) suggests, the presence of
grainy pixels, which “seem to lend the image a greater sense of authenticity (as in old
digital snapshots)”. Furthermore, Pantti and Bakker (2009, 482) found that some of the
Dutch journalists they interviewed for their research considered amateur content as
more intimate and direct, and its often poor technical quality and intrinsic aesthetic an
asset that made the content seemingly more authentic.
Yet, these now conventional aesthetics and discourses of amateur authenticity,
which arguably provide new and more proximate interpretations of reality than those
offered by exhausted and detached normative reportorial frames, are to a great extent
authenticated as journalistic discourses through equal claims of photographic realism,
indexicality or referentiality—that is, the photograph’s embedded capacity to depict
and ratify the “real world” as it is (Barthes 1984; Hall 1981; Te´tu and Touboul 2014)—
distinctive of traditional forms of documentary photography or photojournalism.
Interestingly, Zelizer (2004, 130–131) suggests that regardless of journalists’ advocacy
for the referentiality of photographs as a means of providing trustworthy reports,
“it is its symbolic or connotative force—its ability to contextualise the discrete details
of the setting in a broader frame—that facilitates the durability and memorability of
news image”. Indeed, when we engage in interpreting a photograph, it is our ability to
contrast it with other images that facilitates its perceived realism, as “experience … is
filtered through ‘already seen’ images” (Eco 1998, 213–214). Here, Eco referred to a
mediated imagery that forms what Wheeler (2002, 131) terms our “qualified expectations
of reality”, namely the shared set of professional ethics codes, traditions of photographic
grammar, public awareness of photographic processes, and their faith founded
on decades of experience.
This culturally available social stock of knowledge that Taylor (2003) terms social
imaginary aids us in attaching meaning to the configuration of expressive codes present
in photographs (Hall 1981, 227) but, most importantly, it aids news media in performing
the discursive practices that authorise them to impose its constructed truths
on the public (Broersma 2013); their articulation of the real. Broersma (2010, 17–18)
remarks that journalism functions as a performative discourse that endeavours to persuade
the public of the truthfulness of its accounts, either by (re-)staging or retelling
574 EDDY BORGES-REY
events and consequently attaching meaning to them, or by describing and producing
phenomena at the same time. When it succeeds in persuading the public through the
way it presents the news, journalism transforms an interpretation into a reality upon
which citizens can act (17–18). Journalism’s performative power then resides in the
normative conventions (news values, codes of ethics, aesthetics, etc.) it applies to persuade,
rather than in its referentiality (17–18). As explained by Wheeler (2002, 5), “‘phototruth’
is not based on a reader’s conviction that photography is reality … Viewers
will believe in its truth as long as they believe it corresponds in a meaningful way to
reality”, or they are led to believe so.
Algorithmic Images and Software Simulations
The indexical authority of photography and information conveyed by news
media, argues Baudrillard (1983, 120–121), are the result of a previous selection, a montage
that has already tested reality through questions that provide scenarios of regulated
oppositions whereby nothing really occurs by mere chance. Yet audiences,
proficient in the use of lo-fi shoot-and-share technologies and armed with a raw understanding
of the ideological implications of news production, seem to recognise these
mediated tests once they appear. This is perhaps because audiences nowadays are conversant
in the performative discourses associated with digital photography—for
instance, the effects of framing and photo-retouching on the viewer’s perception—and
the already familiar epistemological problems that digital photography inherited from
its analogue ancestor—its capacity to denotatively show what the electronic device
sees whilst depicting a referent that is connotatively mediated and culturally determined
(Barthes’s denotative/connotative paradox) (Bate 2013b, 86–87).
As new and more sophisticated forms of networked digital imagery emerge,
today’s photography is inevitably mediated by computer software—programming
codes, data structures and algorithmic automation—adding an additional layer of complexity
to the whole argument of photographic authenticity. In this light, contemporary
digital photography is approached as a socio-technical network that encapsulates the
agency resultant from a convergent set of technologies, meanings, uses and practices
(Go´mez Cruz and Meyer 2012, 204). This new dimension that photography inherits from
“new media” frameworks, makes images part of a network of data (Bate 2013a, 47) that
offers even wider audience engagement (Caple 2013, 6).
Bate remarks that a new ontology of digital photography should therefore distance
itself from issues of indexicality—as the possibility of reducing digital images to
computing data undermines their iconicity (Rubinstein and Sluis 2013, 34)—and should
focus instead on how the image is subject to subsequent image processing and networked
automation, hence stimulating new aesthetic practices (Bate 2013a, 37–42). As
computer software simulates what was once a physical media (Manovich, cited in Lister
2013, 13), photography nowadays is a simulation “of the thing that it once was” (Lister
2013, 6).
In his definition of simulation, Baudrillard (1983, 11) observes that simulation is
the opposite of representation: “the latter starts from the principle that the sign and
the real are equivalent … Conversely, simulation starts from the utopia of this principle
of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 575
reversion and death sentence of every reference”. In this process of simulation rather
than communicating and creating meaning, media “exhaust[s] itself in the act of staging”
communication and meaning (Baudrillard 2006, 80–81) in the same way a “photographer
imposes his contrasts, lights, angles … to approach the original from the
right angle, at that right moment or mood that will render it the correct answer to the
instantaneous test of the instrument and its code” (Baudrillard 1983, 120–121).
In this sense, photo manipulation or retouching is one of the most common
means of generating simulacra through photographic software. Once the image
becomes informational data, it acquires processual and programmable attributes that
make it fundamentally malleable (Rubinstein and Sluis 2013, 28–29). Widely adopted
practices of mobile photography have contributed to both an abundance of applications
(apps) that allow users to easily improve otherwise mundane images (Chandler
and Livingston 2012, 12), and to the widespread practice of doctoring mobile images.
Instagram, Hipstamatic, Instaplus, Picfx, Adobe Photoshop Express and Camera+ are
prime examples of such apps that allow users to simulate the look and emulate the
techniques of analogue retro photography by cropping, enhancing, blurring, saturating,
contrasting, superimposing, balancing or applying filters that simulate cross-processing,
high dynamic range (HDR), vignettes, chromatic aberration effects, type of lenses, cameras,
films, paper, lens flares, etc. (Go´mez Cruz and Meyer 2012, 216). These visual signifiers
of nostalgia and analogue imperfection (Chandler and Livingston 2012, 3; Halpern
and Humphreys 2014, 11–12) “attach the connotations of a ‘look’ with cultish values”
(Lister 2013, 11), but more importantly, generate a “simulacrum of analogue authenticity”
(Chandler and Livingston 2012, 3–4) that needs further revision, if we are to consider
arguments of referentiality covered in previous sections.
Within this alterative dynamic, app developers and manufacturers tacitly encourage
a rhetoric of visual perfection mediated by a “discourse of digital progress” whereby
“imaging technologies and software are employed to transcend the limitations of the
photographer’s fallibility” (Chandler and Livingston 2012, 3). Users then are compelled to
employ automations embedded in the software or their own agency by means of a series
of responsible decisions and interpretations (Bate 2013b, 80; Wheeler 2002, 28) to remove
any signs of imperfection in the photograph. Nonetheless, these photo-sharing apps have
been found to be limiting and constraining (Chandler and Livingston 2012, 12), and the
option to create such simulations during the production stage, instead of during postproduction
as was customary Alper (2013, 1237–1238), raises fundamental questions
about the ethics of their adoption by professional and citizen photojournalists alike.3
In any case, one of the prominent features of digital photography, according to
Chandler and Livingston (2012, 3), is its ability to “perfectly replicate, or with additional
manipulation, improve on an original, generating a hyperreality in which ‘reality itself
founders’ as a consequence of the ‘meticulous reduplication’ or enhancement of the
real via digital photography”. According to Baudrillard (1983), hyperreality is an
assumed reality with no origin that is achieved by the liquidation or extermination of
all referents (Baudrillard 2006). So, if the simulacrum of analogue authenticity discussed
by Chandler and Livingston acts as a catalyst for the generation of a photographic
hyperreality, it appears then that the process by which analogue photography was
remediated (Bolter and Grusin 1999) by algorithmic photography now leads to the
question of whether the algorithmic image can be remediated by a hyperreality of analogue
photography.
576 EDDY BORGES-REY
Methodology
As mentioned above, this article explores how professional and citizen photojournalists
use the online photo-sharing platform Instagram to construct a hyperreality: a
version of the world that is assumed to be real but is nonetheless distorted and exaggerated
to the extent that it becomes hyperreal. Through the visual analysis of a sample
of citizen and professional photojournalists’ photographs, this research aims to
determine: (1) how professional and citizen photojournalists stage their simulations of
reality and what differences/similitudes exist between both accounts; (2) the organising
principles and conventions followed in this process; and (3) evidence of performative
discourses through the photo feeds and any associated data gathered from Instagram.
Traditional visual analysis usually relies on semiotic theoretical frameworks. However,
as Lister et al. (2009, 23–24) and Rubinstein and Sluis (2013, 30) remark, semiotics
have proved inadequate for the analysis of an image that is “continuous, frameless,
multiple and processual” as opposed to “finite, framed, singular and static” images (30),
which was the object of study of structuralist semiotics in the past. In marked contrast,
I use an analytical model that relies on tacit interconnections between Broersma’s
notions of performativity in journalism and Baudrillard’s theory of simulation and
hyperreality. Therefore, the visual analysis focuses on: (1) the staging of the photograph
and its underlying meanings, specifically its simulative nature and its potential to persuade
audiences of its authenticity (Baudrillard 2006, 80–81; Broersma 2010, 17–18);
and (2) the photograph’s potential to describe and produce phenomena at the same
time (17–18). I used a sample of 10 photographs per photographer, and I studied the
practices, conventions, imaginary values and contextual information inferred from the
photo feed in Instagram and Iconosquare (platform formerly known as Statigram, which
retrieves certain statistical data from Instagram accounts that is detailed below).
Based on Bate’s (2013a, 40) argument that aesthetic values and rhetorical codes
of digital pictures are more or less identical to that of the older analogue photography,
I used the visual analysis model devised by Lester (2014a, 129–130) for the analysis of
the photographic feed. This analytical model includes conventional visual cues such as
colour, form, depth and movement as well as concepts of contrast, balance, rhythm
and unity. Additionally, it considers the specificities of the algorithmic image by
incorporating cues such as resolution, size and software coding (Lester 2014b, 33).
For the subsequent analysis of the performative discourses, I considered
Rubinstein and Sluis’s (2013, 36) notions of algorithmic photography and based my
analysis on their argument that “an image does not receive its meaning from its indexicality
nor from its iconicity, but from the network of relations around it”. In this regard,
additional indicators such as Iconosquare statistics (including number of followers, most
liked photographs, number of likes per photograph, preferred Instagram filter), themes
and topics, treatment, photographers’ biographies, software design and functionality,
performative features of each modality, inferred context of the photograph, descriptors
(if present), hashtags, etc., are considered.
The sample comprised a total of 120 photographs: 10 photographs per photojournalist
from a total of 12 (six professionals, six citizens) photojournalists. Professional
photojournalists were selected taking into consideration the expert opinions of
Mashable’s Rebecca Hiscott and Digitaltrends’s Kate Knibbs, who both regarded the
sample of six professionals to be “the most captivating on Instagram” (Hiscott 2013;
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 577
Knibbs 2013b). Considering the purpose of this study, Allan’s (2013a, 175) third modality
of “citizen self-reflexively engaged in purposeful witnessing” was the most apt criterion
for selecting citizen photojournalists. From the various terms that could
characterise this modality I selected Mortensen’s (2014a, 2014b) citizen photojournalist
who shows a level of technical proficiency that facilitates the comparative process
between citizen and professional photojournalists. The sample of citizen photojournalists
proved challenging to identify and isolate; citizen photojournalists do not enjoy the
same media attention as professionals. Therefore, a combination of hashtags was used
in order to identify this sample: #photojournalism, #documentary or #streetphotography
in combination with #iphoneonly, #mobile or #iphonography. The sample of 10
photographs per photojournalist is selected from the 10 most liked images from each
photo gallery. The spread is detailed in Table 1.
The Simulated Aesthetics of Instagram
In contemporary digital photography, the photographic simulation of reality
begins at the very moment electromagnetic radiation visible to the human eye is re-interpreted
by a photosensitive electronic apparatus and coded as an algorithmic image
made of informational data. This primal conception stage, that Baudrillard (1983, 11)
calls the third stage in the sign order, has profound performative implications—what is
framed and how it is framed—that delineate, amongst other aspects, the characterisation
of professional or citizen photojournalistic authenticity. At this early stage,
nonetheless, I focus on the elements that articulate pictorial configurations that correspond
to what Baudrillard denominates third-order simulacra or hyperreality. These elements
are staged, and subsequently mediated and negotiated, through decisions made
by professional and citizen photojournalists during the production and photo-retouching
stage of their simulations. In order to have a clear indication of what techniques
and effects were used by photojournalists in the sample, and how they were used to
TABLE 1
Sample of professional and citizen photojournalists
Name Instagram user Posts Followers
Professional photojournalists
David Guttenfelder @dguttenfelder 1351 664,237
Ed Kashi @edkashi 647 118,319
Kevin Frayer @kevinfrayer 741 87,616
Ivan Kashinsky @ivankphoto 711 114,997
Benjamin Lowy @benlowy 1079 145,665
Brad Mangin @bmangin 1271 42,721
Citizen photojournalists
Ravi Mishra @ravimishraindia 368 12,112
Eric Herrera @renhoeck 729 31,475
Theo Zierock @theozierock 77 283
Tayfun O¨ ztu¨rk @tayfunozturksp 146 490
Yuriko Yasu @yuyuriyuriko 136 132
Mike Trikilis @fotomojophotography 1252 454
578 EDDY BORGES-REY
construct the simulations, I firstly catalogued every noticeable visual cue (namely camera
settings, rules of composition, post-processing effects and techniques) and Instagram
statistical data gathered through Iconosquare (which for this stage consisted
mostly of what particular Instagram filter was used). Then I grouped these visual cues
into four classes—conventional production techniques and conventional post-production
techniques4
(which are more or less the same axiomatic procedures present in
practices of analogue photography or professional hi-fi digital photography) and two
subsequent classes related to the specificities of lo-fi shot-and-share media, specifically
mobile effects and Instagram effects.
For illustrative purposes, I calculated the number of times each technique or
effect appeared in every photograph to offer a sense of the results of the visual analysis,
and used these data to generate a chart that visually summarises patterns of usage
per collective (professionals and citizens). This visualisation provided a measurement of
the extent to which each collective used conventional techniques consistent with professional
neatness, or on the contrary, visual features present in the outputs of mobile
technology and online photo-sharing platforms that are typically associated with citizen
imagery.
Although intended for illustration, the quantitative data offered interesting insight
into how photographic techniques and effects were applied across the sample and the
subtle differences between the aesthetic choices of citizen and professional photojournalists.
As can be seen in Figure 1, the lines representing each collective’s choices show
very similar behaviours, which suggests that in the modality of citizen photojournalism
conventional aesthetic values institutionalised by professional photojournalists are
essential in the construction of citizen imagery.
Correspondingly, the increasingly conventionalised aesthetic features present in
the distinctive raw imagery of “accidental journalism” (Allan 2013a) are assimilated by
professional photojournalists in an almost identical manner to citizen photojournalists’
choices on the categories of mobile and Instagram effects.
Analysing the Simulated Authenticity of the Algorithmic Image
The subtle variations between usage patterns evident in the classes of conventional
production and post-production techniques seem to signal the spaces where the
Instagram community of photojournalists is negotiating the new meanings of conventional
photographic aesthetics. In this respect, the coincidental usage of conventional
production techniques by both collectives highlights not only the current prevalence of
such axiomatic paradigms, but also its importance for citizen photojournalists, who displayed
proficiency in emulating professional uses of the normative rule of the thirds,
asymmetric composition and the incorporation of a subject on the frame. These results
were consistent with Mortensen’s (2014a) findings discussed earlier, which contradicted
the underpinnings of the professional–amateur divide. Yet, the usage of post-processing
techniques, mobile and Instagram effects—similarly performed by both collectives
as well—played a more fundamental role not only as the distinctive aesthetic features
that ultimately made the sample of simulations visually striking, but for the performative
construction of the hyperreality that these simulations facilitated.
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 579
Although the range of post-processing alterations that are allowed in traditional
photojournalism is fairly limited (only permitting contrast and colour enhancement and
cropping), the implicit malleability of this algorithmically networked image, which as
data suggest appears to be better assimilated by citizens than professionals (see
Figure 1), makes simulations more susceptible to photo-retouching. This is confirmed
by high usage patterns in the categories of contrast enhancement and incorporation of
vignettes followed by pixellation and Instagram filters in the subsequent classes of
mobile and Instagram effects. Together with vignettes, other post-processing techniques
that are regularly used by citizen photojournalists in the articulation of their simulations
are sharpness and blur—historically associated with conventional aesthetics of
professional analogue or hi-fi digital photography. Nonetheless, some of the instances
where such effects were identified did not correspond with professional standards.
Blurriness, for example, an optical effect that traditionally served to distinguish subject
from ground, proved problematic due to software design limitations that generally permits
only radial or linear application of the effect with the focal point remaining in the
centre of the frame (as shown in Figure 2).
In this regard, an algorithmic effect designed to simulate a functional, imperceptible
and widely conventionalised optical technique (depth of field) acquires a new, more
aestheticised meaning and is assimilated by audiences at an accelerated pace thanks to
Instagram. Although a blurry halo surrounding the borders of a frame with no functional
justification, and sometimes blurring important expressions of the subjects in the
frame is contradictory from a photographic perspective, its usage is widely accepted
nowadays as an aesthetic photo-retouching imperative, beginning to show signs of
software mediation in the performativity of both groups. Although a number of mobile
apps employ different masks and varying degrees of blurriness to convincingly simulate
FIGURE 1
Aesthetics of citizen and professional photojournalists
580 EDDY BORGES-REY
depth of field, the sample did not show evidence of the use of such advanced options.
Unquestionably, the most characteristic visual feature in the sample (almost identically
used by both collectives) was pixellation—the grainy look that emulates analogue photographs
taken with a high ISO film, or mobile photographs with high contrast alteration.
This pattern seems to suggest that the dim, granular look commonly seen in
mediated citizen imagery (Allan 2014, 146) retains the emotional sense of immediacy
and proximate authenticity that professional photojournalists actively seek in order to
arguably enhance the certificate of presence of their photographs.
Achieving Authenticity
In order to appreciate how authenticity functions within these simulations, let us
consider the photograph of a lonely bison in Yellowstone National Park shot with an
Apple iPhone by professional photojournalist David Guttenfelder (Figure 3). The frame
depicts a scene slightly colour-saturated with dominance towards blue tones. The texture
and volume of clouds suggest a marked enhancement in contrast that adds dramatic
effect to the shot. The frame is well balanced and consistent with the rule of
thirds: the main subject has been placed on the lower horizontal axis in a quasi-symmetric
composition. A faded-to-black vignette focuses attention on the central element
and the solid shadow that almost swallows the bison suggests that no further exposure
FIGURE 2
Instagram photograph by citizen photojournalist Eric Herrera. Ó Eric Herrera.
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 581
adjustment or HDR effect has been applied. Despite its surreal appearance, the image
is consistent with some of the conventionalised aesthetics and discourses of amateur
authenticity: the subject remains distant due to the impossibility of using a telephoto
lens and is slightly framed in the centre. Furthermore, its hyperrealist articulation
enhances its connotative character, which as Zelizer (2004) observed, reinforces the
photograph’s memorability and durability (which is corroborated by the almost 14,000
likes given to this image on Instagram).
The apparent indexicality of this simulation makes us believe in the existence of
this bison. We are certain that it is placidly walking this valley at the Yellowstone Park
and we do not contest the fact that the photographer was physically there at the
moment of shooting the picture. However, we seem to forget that when we use our
eyes to see a scene like the one simulated in this frame, we do not see the world in a
colour-boosted, bluish, hyper-contrasting manner, do not perceive pixels through our
eyes, and do not distinguish this range of contrast when we see the clouds in the sky.
And yet nowadays, we appear to be so accustomed to this exaggerated aesthetic that
it has gradually become an imperative for us to consider a simulation authentic and
truthful. This paradox seems to have a profound impact on our subjectivity, as we now
seem compelled to imitate as image producers, these conventions in order to remain
attuned with this hyperreal staging.
FIGURE 3
Instagram photograph by professional photojournalist David Guttenfelder. Ó David
Guttenfelder.
582 EDDY BORGES-REY
Citizen photojournalist Ravi Mishra provides additional evidence in support of this
argument. In his simulation, we see a young girl and her mother queuing outside a
polling booth during the Indian elections on 12 May 2014 (Figure 4). The texture and
volume in the frame suggest a high-contrast enhancement as well as colour desaturation
with dominance towards warm tones. With this visual configuration, Mishra’s simulation
somehow contributes to legitimise resilient aesthetic stereotypes frequently
used to enact India visually: pale, sepia colour schemes with dominance of warm tones,
thus appealing to already-existing imaginary values.
Through their more reflexive form of feature photo reportage—as opposed to
accidental journalism’s breaking-news style—both collectives used Instagram filters to
either enhance colour vibrancy (Figure 5) or to reinforce the authenticity of their simulations
(Figure 6) by means of conveying a more neutral look.
Instagram filters most commonly used by professional photojournalists included
Lo-Fi (rich colours, strong shadows, saturation and warm temperature), Earlybird (older
look, sepia tint, warm temperature), Sutro (burned edges, dramatic highlights and shadows,
purple and brown tint) and Mayfair (warm pink tone, subtle vignetting and thin
black border); whilst citizen photojournalists preferred Inkwell (shift to monochrome
with no added editing), X-Pro II (colour vibrancy, golden tint, high contrast and slight
vignette), Valencia (increased exposure, warm colours), Lo-Fi and Willow (monochrome,
purple tones, translucent white border). The presence of predefined filters and similar
FIGURE 4
Instagram photograph by citizen photojournalist Ravi Mishra. Ó Ravi Mishra.
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 583
retouching techniques on the set of simulations suggests that photojournalism in Instagram
is approached experimentally, affording a less rigorous adherence to ethical,
stylistic and aesthetic requirements demanded of professionals. Furthermore, these
alterations and the way in which they have been used do not appear to correspond
with a sense of emotional attachment to the past or analogue nostalgia, as suggested
by previous research (Bate 2013b, 86; Chandler and Livingston 2012, 3–4; Halpern and
Humphreys 2014, 11–12). Instead, the aesthetic attributes of these simulations present
an interesting dichotomy; on the one hand, they seem to respond to a desire to make
visually striking images and, on the other, they seem to be used as a means to enhance
their referentiality by using techniques such as colour desaturation. There are additional
factors to consider—which I address later in detail—that relate to the propensity of
Instagram’s software design to encourage picture alteration as part of the photographic
experience.
To summarise the findings of this section, it may be concluded that the reiterated,
increased and synchronous use of contrast enhancement, colour saturation or
desaturation, pixellation, blurriness, sharpness and faded vignettes (and to a lesser
degree Instagram filters) by both collectives, creates a set of simulations that challenge
conventions of realism and objective reporting typical of traditional photojournalism.
These aesthetic values that Halpern and Humphreys (2014, 11–12) call “false aura” and
are high in connotative strength, paradoxically appear to enhance the certificate of
presence of these simulations, as their evidential testimony does not contradict any
FIGURE 5
Professional shot (Instagram effect: Lo-Fi). Ó Brad Mangin.
584 EDDY BORGES-REY
conventions of authenticity discussed earlier. Finally, the conventional use of axiomatic
compositional rules by both collectives when framing their images also plays a fundamental
role in counterbalancing the overreliance on filters and post-processing effects.
Negotiating the Performativity of Simulations
I have thus far discussed the elements that the sample of citizen and professional
photojournalists used to articulate their simulations, devising, in the process, the agencies
intervening in their performativity. Although highly altered by the intervention of
algorithmic photographic processing, these simulations seem to retain the certificate of
presence that characterises the authenticity of amateur imagery. As discussed before, in
order to persuade the public of its authenticity and subsequently reach the status of
hyperreality, these simulations interact with the performative discourses employed by
the photojournalist to stage an interpretation of the real world with the potential to
influence society’s subjectivity. Building from this argument, I now turn to discuss the
elements that enacted the performative discourses of the sample. During the course of
the research, it became obvious that the performativity of both collectives is largely
characterised by three forms of mediation whereby they had to engage in negotiations
with (1) the physical world; (2) the apparatus—having both a fundamental role in the
staging of the simulations; and (3) audiences—which conditioned the simulation’s
ability to describe and create phenomena simultaneously.
FIGURE 6
Citizen shot (Instagram effect: Valencia). Ó Yuriko Yasu.
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 585
As previously suggested, both collectives unanimously used Instagram to enact a
more aesthetic form of reflexive feature photo reportage. By virtue of a random experimental
staging, as opposed to a highly pre-planned one, photojournalists nowadays
use shoot-and-share technologies to shape the look of their image seconds after it is
shot (Go´mez Cruz and Meyer 2012, 216), which arguably further enhances the sense of
flexibility to alter the registered algorithmic data to create their simulations. Additionally,
topics and themes depicted and the frequent appearance of sequential simulacra
comprising very similar images, shot at the same location, with a slight variation of the
angle, evidence a propensity by both collectives to adhere to point-and-shoot conventions
typical of the street photography mind-set. As suggested by Murray (2013, 165–
166), this performativity favours an immediate and transient display and framing of the
small and mundane—as opposed to mediated citizen witness accounts—contributing
not only to documenting everyday life experiences, but also enhancing its sense of
proximity.
In staging the real world, both collectives inevitably mediate the algorithmic
interpretation of physical objects and scenes. The correlation between the agents and
agency that interact in the mediation of the physical world is in principle similar to that
of analogue or hi-fi digital photography and can be outlined by the operator–spectator–spectrum
relationship described by Barthes (1984, 9). Here, the photojournalist performs
a series of conventionalised discourses using an apparatus (comprising both the
capture device and the software that governs it) to capture a scene that audiences perceive
as being a truthful simulation of the captured moment. However, algorithmic processing
introduces an additional dimension between spectrum and the resulting
simulation that Rubinstein and Sluis (2013, 27–28) describe as the relationship objectunknowable-image.
The analysis suggests that at the unknowable stage, both citizen
and professional photojournalistic performativity is overpowered by the device and the
software as they code the information captured by the camera sensor.
The transference of power from the photojournalist to the apparatus is further
evident as the photojournalist tries to achieve an idealised perfect image. In this process,
they navigate, as suggested by Lister et al. (2009, 21–22), an abundance of finely
tuned options, offered by Instagram, to maximise their perceived interaction and freedom
of choice, thus increasing their apparent capacity to negotiate with the apparatus
and even regain certain shares of performative power. This idea is reinforced by
Halpern and Humphreys’s (2014, 13) findings documenting the high value of the
iPhone’s limitations by iphoneographers, as certain artistic and technical skills are
required in order to overcome these limitations. Nonetheless, Instagram’s software
design subtly integrates the editing and post-processing options as a natural phase of
the dynamic of posting an image. Post-processing is almost an ergonomic imperative—
it feels unavoidable, part of the whole performance of shooting a picture, which greatly
reduces the possibilities for uploading an image in its raw unaltered state. In this context,
both collectives appear to struggle with competing forces in the staging of their
simulations. To achieve a performative discourse with the potential to persuade audiences,
they try to overcome the illusion of multiple choice and active control, negotiating
shares of performative power with the technology they use. More importantly, they
try to understand and manage the complexities of simulating the real world through a
transient, processual, computerised networked image that is paradoxically perceived as
both hyperreal and authentic.
586 EDDY BORGES-REY
A third form of mediation occurs once the simulation reaches the Instagram
community. There, the photojournalist negotiates the construction of a collective discourse
with the audience, where the act of following, commenting, liking and geotagging
images can be seen as a form of deliberative interaction. It is within this ecosystem
where algorithmically networked images fulfil Broersma’s (2010) second performative
condition—to describe and generate phenomena simultaneously. In this respect, simulations
organise informational data to describe a scene visually, whilst simultaneously
generating a reaction from the community, reflected by either their active involvement
in commenting, liking and following images and photographers, or by consolidating the
aesthetic hegemony of these performative discourses by creating further simulacra consistent
with its conventions. For instance, forms of registrational interactivity (Lister et al.
2009, 23), such as geotagging,5
enable users to create collectively the visual hyperreality
of a specific location from a multiperspective (Bruns 2005, 291) simulation of reality that
strengthens the authenticity and truthfulness of the individual account.
Highly democratised lo-fi—and increasingly hi-fi consumer-level DSLR—technologies,
together with the collective wisdom of the Instagram community, facilitates the
widespread creation and dissemination of simulations throughout the network. In this
dynamic, a professional’s reputation attracts community attention and makes them
highly influential in the process of modifying the social codes they share with the
public. Amateurs are not fully disenfranchised from this alterative dynamic, as conventionalised
aesthetics and discourses of authenticity present in both mediated citizen
witness imagery (blurry, pixellated images) and more aestheticized framings of the
small and mundane (street photography, Instagram filters) are increasingly assimilated
by professional photojournalists on Instagram.
Conclusion: Challenging the Paradigm of the Real?
It seems then, that the conventions and practices which have afforded professional
photojournalism its performative power are seemingly in need of revision as news audiences
increasingly engage in the collective articulation of hyperreal scenes and moments
through the use of shoot-and-share technologies. As Chouliaraki (2013, 268) puts it, the
re-articulation of this performativity moves from “the primacy of acts of information to
the primacy of acts of deliberation and witnessing”. These shoot-and-share technologies
that unprecedentedly make it possible to control the whole photographic process in situ
—production, post-production, exhibition and dissemination—appear to be re-engineering
the entire photographic experience. As online photo-sharing platforms establish
themselves as archives of collective performative discourses via the practice of documenting
daily life, audiences (aided by professional and citizen photojournalists) begin to institute
new aesthetics and discourses that fuse amateurish rawness (Alper 2014, 1245) with
professional neatness. This interplay between aesthetics and their originating performativity
mediate the new meanings attached to emerging photographic practices and the
technologies that make them possible, thus challenging our interpretations of authenticity,
the real and what distinguishes professionals from amateurs.
The convergent hybridisation of professional and amateur spheres has resulted in
professional photojournalists now being able to switch between an online and offline
ecosystem featuring dissimilar aesthetics and discourses. The offline ecosystem, where
NEWS IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 587
they perform as staff of a news outlet, is heavily mediated by rigid codes of professional
practice, thus demanding the traditional neat, hi-fi simulation of reality; whereas
the online one, where professionals are not necessarily bound to professional pressures,
permits a less constraining lo-fi, saturated, highly contrasted and pixellated hyperreality,
which enables them to engage more effectively with their online followers. Therefore,
the types of simulations that professionals share on Instagram arguably influence a
number of amateurs from that public that avidly engage in photographic practices until
eventually they become the new generation of pros, offering a new performative
discourse which permeates both worlds.
The modality of citizen photojournalism reported in this research represents the
middle ground of this progression—an amateur that tries to simulate the discourses of
professional photojournalists (either because they are photography students, or
enthusiasts of photography) as a mechanism to ratify their capacity to exercise performative
power, thus authenticating their simulations. Paradoxically, the more citizen
photojournalists try to emulate professional standards when creating their simulations,
the more they risk distancing themselves from the aura of authenticity perceived by
news audiences in other modalities of citizen and amateur witnessing imagery, and to
be catalogued by the public as presenting the same detached and artificial frames that
are subject to criticism. The point where both worlds collide, where Instagram’s professional
and citizen photojournalists share an increasingly homogeneous performativity,
which implicitly induces them to create this hyperreality collectively, blurs the boundaries
of both spheres into one single category (perhaps we can call it the hyperreal
photojournalist) that increasingly gains relevance in the photo-sharing platform, as evidenced
by the number of posts tagged with #photojournalism, #streetphotography or
#iphoneography hashtags.
This article has endeavoured to explain the paradox of authenticity posed by
Instagram’s imagery, whereby highly retouched visual components of the simulations
created by citizen and professional photojournalists of the sample seem to coexist with
the certificate of presence of the hyperreal scenes registered on the memory of the
photographic device. Furthermore, it demonstrates the constant interplay between the
normative aesthetics of both collectives, the technologies used to simulate reality and
the performative roles of both types of photojournalists in rendering meaningful simulations
to an audience. In consensus with Rubinstein and Sluis’s (2013, 36–37)
research, this article suggests that the performative discourses of both collectives, their
use of mobile technology and the amplifying effect of Instagram may have the potential
to influence public subjectivity in the establishment of new aesthetic and discursive
conventions that could be stored in future social imaginaries. However, the data gathered
during this study did not afford a clear estimation of the extent to which these
new conventions are widely adopted as part of our collective social imaginary, or on
the contrary, only the transitory emergence of a new photographic stylistic convention
characterised by a fragmentary and individualised adoption (Deuze 2009, 263) amongst
the Instagram user community.
This research, therefore, calls for further empirical research that investigates
whether the simulations created by hyperreal photojournalists are still perceived by
audiences as being authentic. It also demands that important ethical questions be
addressed. For instance, elusive notions on sharing of copyrighted content, digital
labour or data privacy seem to contest our ethical underpinnings, calling for a revision
588 EDDY BORGES-REY
of what we consider ethically justifiable. In this sense, an answer to the question of
whether hyperreal photojournalism is ethically acceptable as a means of depicting news
events to news audiences is of paramount importance.
Although visual constructions that were previously regarded as being heavily processed
are being assimilated as part of our photographic experience at a fast pace—
thanks not only to the democratisation of the technology but more importantly the
agency to create these simulations facilitated by amateur imagery—future research in
the field might aim to address the questions: Does our societal subjectivity operates on
the basis of similar imaginary values to those used during the time of analogue photography?
Or are we witnessing the emergence of a discursive platform with the potential to
alter our interpretation of reality? Or, finally, are citizen and professional journalists’
simulations sufficiently conventionalised to be widely disseminated and have a palpable
effect on the performative discourses of the overall practice of photojournalism?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank the group of photojournalists who comprised the
sample and their invaluable contribution to this research, Neil Blain, Karen Boyle,
David Rolinson, guest editor Stuart Allan and the anonymous reviewers for their
valuable and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
NOTES
1. Regarded as the world’s fastest-growing social site (Lunden 2014) with over 200
million users (Taylor 2014), Instagram is a social media platform that allows the
production, retouching, sharing and commenting of photographs between members
of the online community. Galleries are displayed and arranged as photo
feeds, and although both a mobile and a desktop version are available, its usage
is widely popular through mobile devices.
2. Some examples might include citizen imagery of the September 11 attacks
(2001), the Madrid train bombings (2004), the South Asian tsunami (2004), the
London bombings (2005), Hurricane Katrina (2005), the anti-government protests
in Myanmar (Burma) (2007), the post-election protests in Iran (2009), the Arab
uprisings (2011–2012) and the Boston Marathon bombings (2013).
3. See New York Times photographer Damon Winter’s controversy surrounding his
Hipstamatic-processed photographic series “A Grunt’s Life” (Alper 2014; Knibbs
2013a; Myers 2012; Winter 2011).
4. Conventional production techniques refer to the normative aesthetic rules, camera
settings and methods normally used by photographers to produce their
images, whilst conventional post-production techniques refer to the methods folNEWS
IMAGES ON INSTAGRAM 589
lowed either in a darkroom or through computer software to improve the quality
of the image after it has been shot.
5. The process of adding geographical identification metadata to media.
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