Defining Oneself through Technology...through image

A lot of what Roland Barthes discusses in the beginning of his book, Image, Music, Text, is about the way photographs are increasingly designed for particular effect. They are designed in such a way that each part of the image contributes to an overall message, a connotation or a set of connotations developed from the way in which the audience is pushed to perceive the image. The composition of an image, in essence, defines how people take the message.

The interesting thing is, identity of individuals seem to be being developed through pictures, through the interaction of captioned images and composed websites. Social networking sites seem to promote the conception of an individual as much through images, videos, music, etc, as through the persons description of themselves. Facebook, for example, seems to have very little space dedicated to a self description.

What does this mean?

Well, it could mean a lot of things. The most obvious is that our lives are, in one sense, composed of images (each of which is a composition in and of itself, with its own set of connotated meanings). The more interesting thing, I think though, is the connection of these images to captions and mini-messages inserted below them. When people post pictures; they are in essence composing identity not only through the pictures, but also through what they say, and what others say about them. The captions and the comments. These, as much as the pictures themselves, define the experience that the audience has; they define how that person is seen by each successive viewer. As Barthes points out, captions have capabilities to affirm image meanings, but also to “contradict the image so as to produce a compensatory connotation” (27). While he is specifically referring to the way in which images are used in newspaper, technology has advanced, and now these images are plastered up onto the world wide web. They are a collection of images that are not only captioned by the person posting, but by every single person viewing it. This transformational move is powerful and subtle. The caption, the comment, is now a defining nature about what the person is and how they are defined...at least so long as they decide to accept it (another interesting topic). Power of identity, both of the photo and of the person, is placed into the role of the camera and the posted persona...but also most interestingly, into whoever decides to read it and take the time to post to it. Identity forging becomes a mass production; especially the larger the scope of the network that it is being forged in. The brief caption can define, confront, change, ignore, and belittle the image, or even the set of images.

I guess the question then is, how much are images defined by the captions, headlines, and other text around them, and how do these new ways of interacting in social media really form identities. How much can we really say we are defined by our own particular input and how much of it is from the outside.

How much would a single comment at the end of this blog post change the blog post?

How about a hundred....a thousand...a hundred thousand? (Not that I'm really expecting that).

And a question for another time....are tweets just mini-captions, posted about life situations, events, etc.? They seem quite appropriate in format for that.