Overview
The goal of this study is to understand the social uses of personal photography as an aid both to understanding how people use and will use emerging digital imaging technology, and to designing image-related technology that supports people’s actual practices. A secondary goal is to develop and refine methods based in social science, particularly STS, for understanding the uses of - and resistance to - emerging technologies.
Digital photography, coupled with the possibilities of the internet and of networked image-capture devices such as web-enabled cameraphones, is creating major changes in photographic possibilities. Our premise is that users define a new technology according to its usefulness for their on-going activities, concerns, goals, and practices. To understand the emerging and potential uses of digital imaging technology, then, we are looking at the higher-order social uses of present imaging media and technologies, as well as at other on-going activities for which emerging media and technologies may be useful.
In this study, we have interviewed casual photographers, including both digital and analog photographers and photobloggers. We are giving networked cameraphones to graduate students in our program. We have also examined photos on publicly-accessible photo web sites. We are drawing on the literature of HCI, visual sociology, and the history of photography.
This project is affiliated with Marc Davis' Garage Cinema research project that is developing networked digital imaging devices.
