Photography and communication: social networks and the affective dimension of image

• Grant number: 14/14847-8
• Support type: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2014
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Communications - Visual Communication
• Principal researcher: Wagner Souza e Silva
• Grantee: Wagner Souza e Silva
• Host: Francisco Rui Nunes Cádima
• Home Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract

The practice of photography gained significant increase with the recent gadgets-network hybridization. This configuration is supported by mobility and connectivity of smartphones, now with cameras with increasing technical quality and easy to use applications for attractive plastic interventions, which seems to trivialize the aesthetic possibilities of photography, which promotes an expressive photographic production guided by intimity and affections. Thus, this project aims to analyze this intertwining of aesthetic dispossession and intensified affective dimension of the image, which makes photography much less an object of the conceptual repertoire of Arts, and more a media phenomenon in the fields of Communications. As a research strategy, this project, based on research and critical analysis of bibliography, has the intent to observe and interpret the current insertion of photojournalism in the social network of Instagram, noting the participation of journals, photojournalists and common users, which are equalized by the same interfaces and politics of use, promoting an extensive photographic documentation around the same news topics, reinforcing the autonomy of photography as a media phenomenon. This request submitted to FAPESP aims to enable the development of this research in Portugal, between December 2014 and March 2015, the New University of Lisbon, more specifically with the CIMJ - Center for Research in Media and Journalism, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Francisco Rui Cádima, in view of the interest in seeking an immersion in a research context already well targeted to topics that involve the photography in this project. (AU)