Emotional Archives: Online Photo Sharing and the Cultivation of the Self

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Abstract
This paper focuses on the archiving of emotion in online photo sharing, and specifically on biography sites in which we are encouraged to package our lives as a succession of dramatic moments. It considers how social software functions to animate memory and history in ways that extend photography's role as a medium through which individuals confirm and explore their own identity. The paper focuses on thisMoment (www.thismoment.com), which innovates certain key features of popular photo archives such as Flickr and Nokia Lifeblog. On this site, visual “moments” are given an emotional classification (“This moment made me feel … happy/proud/etc”). Perhaps more importantly, a dynamic visual timeline enables users to supplement their own photographic memories with fragments from the mass media, thereby aiding memorialization and personalizing history. Such practices inevitably arrive in the context of contemporary developments in neo-liberalism, and despite significant continuities demand a rethinking of dominant theories of popular photography.

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