THE PROBLEM WITH VISION

1. There are two major (and contradictory) arguments about the power of
mediated images circulated by pundits and scholars these days.

A. The first argument maintains that images (as representations, icons,

brands, etc.) have tremendous power over viewers at the psychological,
social, political and economic level via mechanisms like scopophilia
and/or commodity fetishism.

B. The second argument, made famous by philosopher Jean Baudrillard, is

that we are now so frequently bombarded with images that we have
become numb to any power they once had to influence our thinking or
behavior.

2. Both these arguments are problematic for social media researchers in that:

A. The stress on the visual levels of exchange tends to occlude the non-
visual, including:

1. Multimodal exchange in which viewers are addressed, informed

questioned, persuaded exhorted, instructed, etc. through text,
sound, code, and other mechanisms.
a. Multimodal exchange is often experienced as speech,
interaction, community, navigation, etc.

2. Algorithmic exchange in which visual data, metadata and user-

generated data resting on servers are subjected to mathematical
formulas:
a. Purpose of algorithmic exchange is to monitor, direct and
predict future trends through mechanisms like feeds and
tickers, and/or target users emotionally as economic
 markets through mining

b. Algorithmic interaction tends to be experienced (when it

is experienced) as surveillance, manipulation, interference,
selling

B. Digital images circulating online dont exist solely only as static objects
that are passively viewed in a front-facing manner.
1. Mark Hanson uses the word imaging to remind us that
images online involve human-machine collaboration at
every turn.
2. The imaging process involves activity at the level of both
the eye and the hand.

TOWARDS HAPTIC VISUALITY

1. Haptic visuality: a condition in which the sensations of seeing and touching

are experienced as connected and overlapping
A. Elo (2014) argues the finger is today at least as significant a factor as the
eye in how images are created and received, and touching at least as
significant as vision.

2. When we think of images both as static objects appearing on our screens and
as living entities grafting to our skins, we can for a time break the death of the
eye, to consider how individuals and communities touch and are touched by
the images of others.
A When we understand touch as both personalized sensation and the
result of social, machinic and biological forces, we move from the space of
phenomenology to framework of ethics, in which we find ourselves
wondering what to do with that which faces us.

GRABBING

1. In earlier work, (2008, 2013, 2015) I have argued that social media viewers
produce, consume and circulate visual material not by gazing (as one would a
traditional film shown in a cinema), nor by glancing (as one might do with a
television turned on in a room), but in a segmented and tactile manner I have
come to think of as grabbing.

2. Grabbing combines notions of the haptic visuality with additional overtones of

power and ethics.

2. As both embodied personalized sensation and social metaphor, grab-based

phrases have power built into their syntax:
a. passive body affected by an active one: land grab attention grab
b. event in which outcome is unclear, or where we are unsure of who the
victor will be up for grabs

3. As a physical act, grabbing lends itself to questions of ethics.

a. Depending on how much social power I have in a given environment,
when you grab me, I may acquiesce, I may grab you back, I may move
elsewhere, and so forth.
b. These actions may be clearly visible, they may be obscured from my
vision by other sorts of activities, or they may be intentionally hidden
from view.

HAPTIC VISUALITY: CLICKBAIT, TRIGGERS, SELFIES

1. What they are:

A. Selfie: Digital image taken (and sometimes circulated online) by
oneself

B. Click-bait: Digital content (text and image or video) designed to make

 viewers hand click a link

C . Online Trigger: Digital content (text, image, video) experienced by a

viewer as a reminder of a traumatic event in the past that re-activates
emotional suffering in the present, or catalyze it in the future through
processes like emotional contagion

2. Popular media explanations why each term works or is a problem

a. Selfies work/are a problem because exploit the branded self as form of
capital, and demonstrate ones desire for social control of the viewer.

b. Click-bait: work/is a problem because the exploit curiosity as form of
capital and demonstrate ones desire for financial/surveillance control of the
viewer.

c. Triggers: work/are a problem because the exploit emotional attention
as a form of capital and demonstrate ones desire for discursive cultural
control of the viewer (or the sender, in the case of the trigger wars)

3. Problems with popular explanations of each:

a. Describing selfies as only self-branding exercises fails to explain the

success of
b. Explaining click-bait as working because they exploit
curiosityfails to account

Haptic metaphors embedded in each term:

a. Selfie takers used to call themselves self shooters
b. The term click-bait likens users to animals who see something
desirable (bait) and grab it with their hands (click)
c. The term trigger warning implies that content functions like a loaded
gun that may be fired at the self or others, and thus requires a warning.


Grabbing and Selfies
1. In the selfie production process, grabbing begin with the photographers
decision take a photo of herself.
a. The political reasons behind the decision to photograph oneself vary:
sometimes its because we want to control how our image is produced;
other times we are perfectly willing to sacrifice control, but nobody else is
available to take our photo.
2. Once we press the camera button, and a digital image is grabbed and saved
onto our phones or computers, we have the option to edit, where grabbing works
to cut up and reconstruct images on the screen. Again, editing is fueled by range
of motivations.
A Sometimes a photographer crops or applies a filter to a photo for
reasons that fit into our general notions of the social: for instance, when
she attempts to emulate (or refute) particular norms of beauty, propriety,
civility, citizenship, love.
B. . Other times, edits occur for deeply personal reasons: to replicate a
mood from childhood, to document her mental state, to zoom in on an
element of the face as if using a mirror.)
C. Sometimes the reason a photo is edited in a particular way is because it
needs to be consistent as a part of a set, or as part of a conversation
which often happens when photo is sent as a response to the photo of
another person.
D. Geo-location and hash tags can be similarly used to segment and
reconstruct material in ways that are sometimes personal, sometimes
social, sometimes earnest, sometimes not, sometimes clear, other times
deliberately obscure.

3. Once a user takes and edits a photo, it remains on her phone or computer until
she decides (or someone decides for her) to release it into circulation, where it
goes through another series of grabs.
A. Even if ones photo is never circulated beyond ones phone or
computer, however, its important to understand that both its visual and
 metadata (time taken, geographical markers, I.P. address) are grabbed on
any server on which the image rests in what is colloquially known as the
cloud.
B. When we understand that photos we presume to be private may be
copied off storage servers by government agencies, by corporate hackers,
or (far more common) by someone familiar with our passwords, the
political ramifications of the grab become quite apparent.

4. Even people who swear that in principle everything is fair game on the
internet make personal choices with how they deal with images up for grabs
as they across geographies and temporalities.
a. Is this meme accessible in London, but not in Shanghai? If Im a
Chinese student studying abroad, I may think twice about circulating it to
friends who may be subject to government censorship.
b. Did this sexy image start off in a one-to-one arrangement like a text and
move to a publicly consumed revenge porn site? This may affect how,
or if I engage with it when it winds up in my spam email box.

5. Finally, there is the disciplinary level of the selfie, in which governments claim
the right to seize corporate data (both raw and algorithmically sorted) to aid
them in efforts like facial recognition, law enforcement, or anti-terrorism
initiatives.
a. As anyone who suffered through the Facebook real names policy
knows, this is the level where one does not exist within corporate
structure until government issued identification is produced featuring an
image of ones face.
b. As anyone ever fired from a job because a clearly doctored photo
appears to feature them engaged in an illegal or inappropriate act, this
is the level where the skin of the selfie matters more than the skin of the
self.

GRABBING AND CLICKBAIT


1. In the selfie production process, grabbing begin with the photographers
decision take a photo of herself.
a. The political reasons behind the decision to photograph oneself vary:
sometimes its because we want to control how our image is produced;
other times we are perfectly willing to sacrifice control, but nobody else is
available to take our photo.
2. Once we press the camera button, and a digital image is grabbed and saved
onto our phones or computers, we have the option to edit, where grabbing works
to cut up and reconstruct images on the screen. Again, editing is fueled by range
of motivations.
A Sometimes a photographer crops or applies a filter to a photo for
reasons that fit into our general notions of the social: for instance, when
she attempts to emulate (or refute) particular norms of beauty, propriety,
civility, citizenship, love.
B. . Other times, edits occur for deeply personal reasons: to replicate a
mood from childhood, to document her mental state, to zoom in on an
element of the face as if using a mirror.)
C. Sometimes the reason a photo is edited in a particular way is because it
needs to be consistent as a part of a set, or as part of a conversation
which often happens when photo is sent as a response to the photo of
another person.
D. Geo-location and hash tags can be similarly used to segment and
reconstruct material in ways that are sometimes personal, sometimes
social, sometimes earnest, sometimes not, sometimes clear, other times
deliberately obscure.

3. Once a user takes and edits a photo, it remains on her phone or computer until
she decides (or someone decides for her) to release it into circulation, where it
goes through another series of grabs.
A. Even if ones photo is never circulated beyond ones phone or
computer, however, its important to understand that both its visual and
 metadata (time taken, geographical markers, I.P. address) are grabbed on
any server on which the image rests in what is colloquially known as the
cloud.
B. When we understand that photos we presume to be private may be
copied off storage servers by government agencies, by corporate hackers,
or (far more common) by someone familiar with our passwords, the
political ramifications of the grab become quite apparent.

4. Even people who swear that in principle everything is fair game on the
internet make personal choices with how they deal with images up for grabs
as they across geographies and temporalities.
a. Is this meme accessible in London, but not in Shanghai? If Im a
Chinese student studying abroad, I may think twice about circulating it to
friends who may be subject to government censorship.
b. Did this sexy image start off in a one-to-one arrangement like a text and
move to a publicly consumed revenge porn site? This may affect how,
or if I engage with it when it winds up in my spam email box.

5. Finally, there is the disciplinary level of the selfie, in which governments claim
the right to seize corporate data (both raw and algorithmically sorted) to aid
them in efforts like facial recognition, law enforcement, or anti-terrorism
initiatives.
a. As anyone who suffered through the Facebook real names policy
knows, this is the level where one does not exist within corporate
structure until government issued identification is produced featuring an
image of ones face.
b. As anyone ever fired from a job because a clearly doctored photo
appears to feature them engaged in an illegal or inappropriate act, this
is the level where the skin of the selfie matters more than the skin of the
self.

CLICKBAIT AND GRABBING

1. In the click-bait production process, grabbing begin with the advertisers
decision to combine photo with ad copy, phrased as a particular kind of
question.
a. Reasons behind selfies vary; reasons behind click-bait production are
always the same: to get the click.

2. Companies and individuals engage in this process for a range of reasons:

A. Companies use it to sell products or create buzz for campaigns
A Sometimes activists use this technique for reasons that fit into our
general notions of the social: for instance, when she attempts to emulate
(or refute) particular norms of beauty, propriety, civility, citizenship, love.
B. Sometimes the ad copy is edited in a particular way is because it needs
to be consistent as a part of a set, or as part of a conversationwhich often
happens when it is sent as a response to a media event already in public
circulation.
C. Geo-location and hash tags can be similarly used to segment and
reconstruct material in ways that are sometimes commercial, sometimes
social, sometimes parodic, sometimes clear, other times deliberately
obscure.

3. The moment we click, its important to understand that both visual and
metadata (time taken, geographical markers, I.P. address) are grabbed on any
server on which the image rests in what is colloquially known as the cloud.
B. When we understand that clicking choices we presume to be private
may be copied off storage servers by government agencies, by corporate
hackers, or (far more common) by someone familiar with our passwords,
the political ramifications of the grab become quite apparent

4. Even people who swear that in principle everything is fair game on the
internet make personal choices with how they deal with information as they
across geographies and temporalities.
a. Ashley Madison data as an example
5. Finally, there is the disciplinary level of the click in which governments claim
the right to seize corporate data (both raw and algorithmically sorted) to aid
them in efforts like facial recognition, law enforcement, or anti-terrorism
initiatives.

TRIGGERING

1. What is it?
2. How is it formally constructed?
3. Why does it work?
4. What are the problems associated with it?
5. Why use the grab to think about it