The Power of Image in Facebook by Alexandra Martins

Essay

The Power of the Image on Facebook

Alexandra João Ramos Correia Martins 100719035 alexandrajoaomartins@gmail.com Universidade do Porto

On Images, Select Issues of Visual Culture and Art History Profesor Filip Lipiński

II Dziennikarstwo i Komunikacja Społeczna Wydział Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa Adam Mickiewizc University January 2012

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 3 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................... 4 GENERAL CONTEXTUALIZATION ............................................................................................ 4 Image theory ....................................................................................................................... 4 SPECIFIC CONTEXTUALIZATION ............................................................................................. 7 Brief History of the Internet ............................................................................................... 7 Social network .................................................................................................................... 7 Facebook .......................................................................................................................... 11 FACEBOOK ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................... 11 FACEBOOK SEMIOTICS.......................................................................................................... 11 USER IMAGES........................................................................................................................ 19 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 22 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................... 24

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INTRODUCTION

With the advent of the Internet, and specifically of the web 2.0 that aims to use the collective intelligence through network effects, there is a strong tendency to create a social network, in which the user may assume an integrating part, thus contributing to the existence of the network itself. It’s in this context that the social networks boom. Actually Facebook is the major social network in global terms, connecting people from all over the world, contributing greatly in this way to the concrete realization of the so-called concept globalisation or global village, using Marshall McLuhan expression. One of the opportunities given by social networks is to communicate predominantly trough images, static or dynamic. By taking note of the rising importance of this form of communication and exposure in the social networks, and specifically on Facebook, this essay proposes an introduction and discussion on this theme through image analysis: how the images relate to one another and to other signs, as well as network mechanisms and its interface, through concepts such as semiotics, hypertext, interactivity and virtuality. Beyond the analysis of the posted images, a brief description of the “architecture” and design of the site will be made by analysing, through previous studies, the most attractive areas to the eye of the user. We will be considering the wide range of applications that the service offers in order to boost the image communication, and even multimedia.. The whole study will be demonstrated through the user account of the author, applying the most possible appropriated and strict methodologies, by attempting to answer questions such as if the image on Facebook is the same as the image in the book, if Facebook is some kind of gallery where we place our favourite pictures or if it is a personal museum available to all, if we tend to be narcissist in a way that we mostly post pictures in which we appear ourselves or what is the percentage of image in the contents of Facebook’s layout.

Keywords: Image, Facebook, Socialnetwork, Internet

METHODOLOGY

In order that answers can be found to the previously mentioned questions, we have to undergo a series of steps that have to be applied, as much as possible. After choosing the general theme of the power of the image in a social network, I had to choose a specific one, Facebook, not only for being the most important one nowadays but also because it’s the one I use the most. Before this study began I made a research in which I obtained bibliographic references and previous studies that helped me not only to contextualize this study, but also to deepen the issue and even to find some conclusions. Therefore there was no necessity to create a new profile, to post and keep in contact, which means that nothing was forged. My profile already existed and from the beginning of this study I utilized it in a similar way, so this was a natural process. This essay will only involve my profile, so the other users will only be taken into account when they repost. The main idea is to count the amount of images posted by the author dividing them by classifiable categories and from that point onwards to start the data analysis.

GENERAL CONTEXTUALIZATION IMAGE THEORY

Even though at first the the concept of image may seem simple and obvious it eventually acquires shady edges, by not assuming an unique definition, depending on the fields of study. Since the beginning of history of knowledge that the philosophers explore the complex relationship that binds image and reality. According to ancient etymology, the word «image» is probably connected to its Latin origin imitari. In the book «VII d’ A República», Plato (apud Sousa) defines image as “…first [the] shadows and then [the] reflexes that you see in the water or on the surface of opaque, polished an brilliant bodies, and all similar representations”. Later, the medieval

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rhetoric defines image as aliquid stat pro aliquo1 something that replaces something else, which points us to something that can be fabricated. To Contrera and Hattori, the image is “a term that we commonly use to mention a graphic or verbal form of something that exists or could exist”. In other words it is the representation of something by similarity. (CONTRERA & HATTORI, 2003, p. 26) The classification of images, without which no analysis operation is possible, can be made from many perspectives. The first big division establishes precisely between natural images, which mean the ones produced with no human intervention, and artificial or fabricated images, the ones that require that intervention in order to exist. W. J. T. Mitchell, an iconology scholar, science that studies the language in images and about images, classifies them in a more didactic approach as graphics (paintings, statues, drawings), optics (generated by mirroring and projection), perceptive (the ones created by our senses and recognition of appearance), mental (made by dreams, memory and ideas) and verbal (described by words and suggested by metaphors), or through the union of two or more concepts in order to make the meaning of image understandable. «The analogy is the common point between the meanings of the image».

(JOLY, 1996)

According to Martine Joly, an image is first and above all else, something that resembles something else. This applies even when this image is not defined: in dreams or fantasies, for example, the image looks like the natural vision of things. This similarity puts the image in the category of representations: it seems something that it is not, being thus defined as an analogical sign that holds in similarity its functionality principle. Joly further claims that the image can entwine different materials of which it is made to construct a visual message. In that way, the visual message can be constructed with iconic symbols, which give the impression of similarity with reality, playing with perceptive analogy and with the codes of representation, inherited by the tradition of occidental representation, and with plastic signs that correspond to the image’s components, such as colour, forms, composition and texture. 1 ‘Something stands for something else’, a foundational definition for semiotics.

To Joly (1996), among all theories that have an approach on the image (theories in maths, informatics, aesthetics, psychology, rhetoric, sociology, amongst others), the one that can best describe her concept, in a more general, “globalizing” way, that goes beyond its functional categories, is the semiotic theory. The author emphasises the essentialness for the understanding of the image of the fact that it is heterogeneous, and that it holds, within a limit, different categories of sign: not only the images, in the theoretic sense of the term (iconic signs, analogical), but also the plastic and linguistic signs, the latter related to the verbal language. Modern theorists of the study of the image usually, following their theoretic school, approach the image from two different standing points: the first, one could call textual, made of essentially American tradition, Charles Peirce for instance, understands the image as a text, made of the same characteristics as linguistic production, and therefore the study of the image tries to find its “minimum components”, the figurative equivalents of the grammatical components of the sentence. Typical of this school is the approach that defends that any image can be analysed through three categories: the morphologic elements (dot, line, plan, texture, colour and shape), the dynamic elements (movement, tension and rhythm) and the scale elements (dimension, scale form and proportion). Another standing point, the one we usually call semiotic, normally connected to European tradition, considers the image as a sign. Its analysis aims to unveil the relationships to either the «object» it represents, to either other systems of signs used in society, finding there the roots of its meaning. The typical method of this second school of thought, sustained in Ferdinand de Saussare, for example Roland Barthes, consists in trying to establish a parallel between two kinds of plans, on the one hand between the plan of expression of the image (what it shows) and its plan of content, on the other hand between the plan of significance (the outer reality it references to) and the plan of meaning (the material content of the image). “Thus from both sides the image is felt to be weak in respect of meaning: there are those who think that the image is an extremely rudimentary system in comparison with language and those who think that signification cannot exhaust the image's ineffable richness.” (BARTHES, 1977)

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“Although there was unanimous consent to the growing importance of the visual in historical science in recent times, there remained parted views on whether this represents a consciously elaborated paradigm shift in the discipline’s methodology, or whether the growing accessibility of images due to new technology as the internet results in a more intense personal engagement with the visual which almost naturally translates into the historian’s approach to his or her work.” (GALLOIS, O'REILLY, PENNELL, ROBERT, TOSH, & USBORNE, 2008)

SPECIFIC CONTEXTUALIZATION BRIEF HISTORY OF INTERNET

Developed few years after the end of the Cold War, the ARPANET, a computers network, is today described as the mother of what was about to be named the internet. The North-American power saw in the creation of the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) a reaction, or perhaps even a counter-strike, to the technological advance of the Russian that a few months earlier had launched the Sputnik. The satellite completed a full orbit around the earth every 90 minutes – One and a half hours – and emitted radio signals between the 20 MHz and the 40 MHz frequencies that were audible to anyone possessing a radio receptor. After the creation of NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Administration) the ARPA finally dives into informatics and, it’s through her that the North-American department of defence creates an experimental network for information exchange between computers (originally only four) through the telephone cable network. The growth of this net originated what would come to be called as the ARPANET and allowed scientists, researchers and military strategists to communicate in real time through electronic mail, from physically distant points from each other. During the 70s not only did the ARPANET grow but other networks were also created, such as specific institutions and universities. These networks used different machines, which provided the need to develop communication protocols, in order to allow their interconnection, such as the TCP (Transmission-Control Protocol), and later the TCP/IP. Thus it started to form «…what would become the Internet: a great

number of independent networks that progressively connected to each other through common protocols». (ROSA, 2008, p. 111) In 1983, «in the USA it was already clear that if the TCP/IP protocol unified all of the different networks, the existence of machines from different producers with much different architectures made software sharing impossible in many cases.” 115; VITTADINI, 1995)

(ROSA, 2008, p.

Since no producer could provide a machine with a flexible enough

architecture to satisfy the demands of online operations, the ARPA had the idea to unify at the operating system level, creating UNIX. The creation in 1990 of the WWW (World Wide Web) 2 or plain web, was CERN’s doing (Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire) and at first it only allowed to exchange data between scientists. After working inside the institution it was made available to the world in 1991. In 1992, the software Mosaic revolutionised the web, because through this innovation came the ability to search the WWW. It was during this period that the Internet reached the “masses”, through search engines that made it simpler to access the information around the Internet, allowing for an easier and faster research. Some famous search engines include «Yahoo!» (1994) and «Google» (1996). During those early years some other features became popular, such as the newsgroups, e-mails or the BBS, culminating in the 90s with the spread of a different communication tool that worked in synch, the IRC (Internet Relay Chat), that allows instant messaging. Many social networks, like Facebook, supply the chat service through their built-in application, which allows the users to communicate in real time. But contrary to what happened in the IRC, where many users could join virtual rooms in which they wrote messages that would appear in the screens of the other users in real time, in these chats the communication is made one-on-one. Both the applications and the social networks are already part of the second generation of the WWW, named Web 2.0 or participative Web. The term Web 2.0 was coined in 2004 by the O’rilley Media Company and, even though it’s not 2 Documents system in hypermedia that are interconected and executed on Internet

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unanimous, the term, that first came up as the title of a conference cycle on «web as a platform», still lives, even when considered by some as only marketing. Web 2.0 is thus not a new version of the web. In other words there are no technically specific updates but rather a change of perspective over the web, a perspective that emphasizes the dynamic power of interaction and the sharing of information between users and servers. This new reality also brings the possibility for the user to stop being a mere receptor and to become an emitter as well (the solid example of Youtube). Lastly, in benefit of the dynamism and the interaction, APIs (Application Programming Interface) have been created that allow the communication between different sites. These will, in turn, create multiple plugins that allow stretching the basic functionality of a certain site or application and/or gathering contents. In the XXIst century came the first «hackers» attack to websites of big companies like eBay, Yahoo!, Amazon. (QUERIDO, 2004) Nowadays we already hear the term Web 3.0, first used by the journalist John Markoff in a New York Times’ article. This is what the so-called semantic web does: «it narrows the search and tries to give the user what he/she really wants. This is where the polemic could start, as it helps to reduce the casualty. The surprise effect is lost.» , (RIBEIRO, 2009)

SOCIALNETWORK

After having covered many concepts here is the sum and conclusion of social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. According to the definition above, the first recognizable social network site launched in 1997. SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists. Each of these features existed in some form before SixDegrees, of course. Profiles existed on most major dating sites and many community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of Friends, although those

Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also affiliated, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years later. SixDegrees was the first to combine these features. SixDegrees promoted itself as a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others. While SixDegrees attracted millions of users, it failed to become a sustainable business and, in 2000, the service closed. Later in 2000 the website was shut down but another similar one appeared in 2002, bearing the name «Friendster.com», which showed more appealing and creative opportunities, giving the possibility of interaction with other internauts. The Friendster offered new possibilities such as posting pictures and send messages to «virtual friends» or «Friendsters» and to create links to their personal pages. Just like his predecessor, the Friendster was used to go out with someone or to socialize. The Friendster could not evolve in a fast and effective way, and eventually lost users to the new networks that had appeared meanwhile. In 1997 the first social network was created with the name « Six Degrees.com». From 1999 to 2002 some networks were created, with an average of two or three every year. However in 2003 a real social networking boom happened that would last until 2006. In 2003 a total of eight Social Networks opened their sites; 12 did the same in 2004 and eight again in 2005. Finally, in 2006, five networks were launched. Beyond the aforementioned networks some others are also famous, from which I will note the following ones: Flickr (picture sharing); Youtube (video sharing); MyChurch (uniting the catholic community); Twitter (news sharing); Lunarstorm (Swedish community’s website); Cyworld (website from South Korea that started as a forum). While MySpace attracted the majority of media attention in the U.S. and abroad, SNSs were proliferating and growing in popularity worldwide. Friendster gained traction in the Pacific Islands, Orkut became the premier SNS in Brazil before growing rapidly in India (Madhavan, 2007), Mixi attained widespread adoption in Japan, LunarStorm took off in Sweden, Dutch users embraced Hyves, Grono captured Poland, Hi5 was adopted in smaller countries in Latin America, South America, and Europe, and Bebo became very popular in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and

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Australia. Additionally, previously popular communication and community services began implementing SNS features. The Chinese QQ instant messaging service instantly became the largest SNS worldwide when it added profiles and made friends visible (McLeod, 2006), while the forum tool Cyworld cornered the Korean market by introducing homepages and buddies (Ewers, 2006).

FACEBOOK

Facebook appears through the hands of the North-American Mark Zuckerberg while he was studying psychology in Harvard. A computer programming enthusiast, Zuckerberg, already had developed some social networks destined to students, such as Coursematch and Facemash. In February 2004, Mark launches “The Facebook” as it was originally known as, a name taken from distributed sheets of paper. The website spread with such speed that within a month half of the student’s population in Harvard already had a profile. This made the network to quickly spread to the other North-American universities. In August 2005 he buys the domain Facebook.com just as we know it. From September of the same year onwards, the North-American students could start registering, but within one year it grew out of the educational institutions to anyone who possessed an e-mail and registered. The site remained free and profiting through advertisement feedback until today. Mark Zuckerberg was charged by former colleagues of copying ideas and codes from other social network founders but the case was never solved. Actually Facebook supports more than 500 millions of users all over the world, and in 2010 was produced a movie called “The Social Network” exactly about this story.

FACEBOOK ANALYSIS FACEBOOK SEMIOTICS

First of all, a semiotic analysis will be made to the syntax level (domain of the aesthetic information, where its material characteristics, forms and means, lend singularity to the sign), semantic (domain of semantic information, as it works with

joints/relations of the sign with its referent, even though it is based on the syntax level) and pragmatic (domain of the meaning in the production of sense and meaning to the user) of Facebook. Semiotics is, according to Lúcia Santaella, the science that has all possible languages as the object of study. As a social means, Facebook has a wide array of languages. The users are readers and producers of signs, such as images, videos and texts. In other words, they communicate by means of the verbal and non-verbal language. This analysis’ goal is to investigate the visual languages presents in the main page of, a user profile; through it we will understand how the production of meaning and sense of the signs work, both from the referent and from the interpreter, considering that “it is in Man and through Man that operates the process of change of the signs (any stimulation emitted by the world’s objects) in signs or languages (products of the conscience). (SANTAELLA, 1983)

In this study three fundamental concepts of the Persian semiotic are applicable: sign, object and interpreter. The first is defined as “something that is to someone by something under some aspect or capacity.”

(PEIRCE, 1897 apud SERRA)

First, it’s important to understand that the signs can receive three different classifications regarding the referent. They’re the icon when it establishes some relation with its referent (photo, statue), the index when there’s a direct relation with the referent, in other words, physically connected (wet floor), or the symbol when the established connection with the referent is arbitrary (the written word represents the verbal one and is the sign of the sign, thus called symbol). In the specific case of Facebook, their profiles present a series of signs that unleash different reactions in the people. Some of them are patterned by the fixed layout of the page, others are determined by the user for the creation of his virtual identity. When it comes to the sign as a symbol, the logo of the social network can serve as an example. When we listen or read the word Facebook, we relate the name to the object, because it was established to us in the form of a convention. It also interesting that the name suggests itself to more than one different semiotic code, on one hand to visual language and on the other hand to literary code, face and book, respectively.

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This single conjugation can be interpreted, as we will see later, as a reflex of the interface itself which promotes both, visual and textual communication, even merging them sometimes. The profile’s model, renewed not too long ago, is also patterned by the web. In the main page of each profile, to the left, we see the visual cover applied (optional), and some personal information like the name, where he/she studies, the home address, the work address and the social status. In an horizontal line with that information’s board several divided boxes appear, in which we can see the friends, “likes”, tagged photos or the maps of the places where they’ve been. The rest of the page is the wall, now shaped as a timeline in which we go back in time as we scroll down and where the friends can write whatever they want. When it comes to the icon, in the top left corner of the screen a profile picture appears – an analogy to its referent. Other icons present in Facebook are the friend’s photos in a box in the right corner and the images of maps of the places where he/she has been, and also tagged photos. As an index example we have the profile links. Apart from receiving a name, they’re accompanied by images that show what the user will find by opening it. For example: the maps with a red dot for localization, the abstract pictures of photographic moulds, the thumbs up of a like. The sentences written in the profiles by their owners, beyond being symbols, they’re signs with which the referent establishes a direct association or relation. At a syntax level a lot has been referred with the previously mentioned data; however other signs establish themselves and the reunion of all of them shows us a patterned page, even though the textual and visual context change according to the profiles, which is based on the blue and white colours, the same of the logo but with no big variations. The background of the page is blue, in contrast with the white boxes of the information; only the top bar is deep blue with white text. In that white box we can find the famed wall, one of the main managers of interactivity. The rest of the text is divided between tones of blue, black and grey, organized according to their informative.

In the top blue bar sits the logo with the hyperlink to the profile page, three pictures referring to the friendship requests, messages and notifications, a people’s search bar, a hyperlink with the username and a thumbnail of the profile picture, a hyperlink to the home page and the access to the account and privacy settings, log out button, etc. On the right-bottom side we can find the chat, which may be active or not, depending on the user’s option. The place kept for advertisement fades in the background, under the timeline-wall, on the right side of the page. Sometimes it doesn’t even appear. The site of the social net is sustained in the structure of communication in the cyberspace, that possesses like mediator for updating information the own computer and its interfaces (monitor, modem, printer, programming languages). The updating is limited physically by the display, by the screen of the monitor of the computer and by definition is the direct result of the relation between the number of "pixels" and the quantity of colours chosen for the viewing.

In the Facebook, the communication is established by the signs constructed by the referring and by the interpretation of those signs by the interpreter. That situation leads us to analyse the levels signs through the relation of them with the involved in the act of the communication: the semantic one, to the refer to the relations of meaning between sign and referring, is connected to the one that mounts the profile, whereas the pragmatic one, upon implying the significant relations with the interpreter, comes back for the visitor of the profile.

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The levels of signs are united to the concepts of denotation and connotation. Through them, it is possible to analyse the tension between the real and the unreal created by the users: each person construe their profile according to the image that would like to have or to show, not exposing the real one. Semantic level, exposing in the profile determined pictures, communities, statements and phrases, the user is going to link those signs to him, building of itself the image that would like and transmitting it to the others users. Being like this, the creator of the profile expects that the signs of his page are reproduced and interpreted, by those that visit, on the denotative level, or be, as reproductions of the reality, like itself the person "created" on the web was a truly reflex of the personality of the "creative". In that case the analysis can start from the own creator of the profile since the page analysed will be mine. Through the page of the Facebook I intend to share a little of who I am with acquaintances and friends, creating my image the more close similar to the reality. Citations, comments, literary preferences, musicals and cinematographic portray a little more than I am and than taste, but will that transmit the reality, will be that the real image created in another user and is real the image created by the user? The analysis semiotics, in the pragmatic scope, is relative to the meanings associated to the viewing and to the navigation of the site, dependent of the repertoire of the user/interpreter. Upon seeing determined picture, phrase, community or statement, the user will remits those signs to the creator of the profile, making a connotative interpretation. That way, the relational trial that is created in the mind of the one that visits a profile is not denotative, since the relation of representation that the sign maintains with his object, the owner of the profile, produces in the interpretative mind, the visitor, another sign – mental image, feeling, plan, gestural reaction, words, between others – that translates the meaning of the first one. According to Charles Peirce, the sign has two objects and three interpreters. The immediate object (inside the sign, in the own sign) concerns the way as the object in itself (that that the signs replace, the owner of the profile) is represented in signs (pictures, phrases, statements, communities, number of friends).

The immediate

interpreter that is what the sign is apt to produces in any interpretative mind. The dynamic interpreter is what the sign actually produces in each singular mind,

depending on his nature as sign and of its potential as sign. The interpreter in it consists in the way that any mind would react to the sign, given certain conditions. For carry out this pragmatic analysis I asked two individualities, one that knew me personally and another that knew me merely from the web. André Fernandes, acquaintance of the social net, described me as a popular person, apparently with a "culture above on average", I like music, movies and literature and painting, little talkative, with interest in psychology. The images of paintings reveal interest, and possibly, studies in that area. Pedro Silva, by net means, describes me as a person with a big circle of friends, taste for music, movies, literature and painting. The poetry of Bukowski in the "About" sample that she likes the poet and that identifies herself with what he expressed in those verses. Also Pedro believes that the user studies painting. With the pragmatic analysis, Pedro worked the immediate object, therefore knew the object in itself: the owner of the profile and can relate to the way she’s represented on Facebook. Both Pedro and André interpreted the user as being a popular person that likes culture, what the signs produced in the mind of the two is the interpreter immediate. André believes that the author of the profile reads a lot, is quite sociable, that studies psychology and painting; Pedro, upon interpreting the signs considers that user exaggerated in his cultural involvement, actually is not assiduous reader, neither recognize her in the verses, neither studies painting, and neither in social involvement since that the nucleus of real friends is reduced and is a shy person, that difference of interpretation, produced by the signs of the profile is the dynamic interpreter The reaction to the signs, as find or not the user interesting or find-her pretty or ugly, is personnel and can be different for each interpreter; the way like each mind reacts to the signs of the profile is the interpreter in itself. This analysis raises a series of questions as the virtuality in the social nets and in respective images. For Deleuze (1998), of simple way, the virtual is a characteristic of the idea, existing therefore and barely in potential. Many adapt this concept to the social nets inasmuch as they believe that, although the creators in profile exist in reality, their profile is just a idea of them-selves.

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Hardly paradoxically, others believe that "the majority of the social users of the communication mediated by computer create compatible on-line personalities with their identities off-line". (BAYM, 1998 apud CASTELLS, 2001) In physicists terms the image that one sees on the screen of the computer is virtual because needs the extension of the reflected luminous rays, and not of the rays in itself. Following the present tendency in the texts of Deleuze, Guattari and Pierre Lévy "that affirms the virtual as a function of the creative imagination, fruit of consulting the more varied between the art, the technology and the science, capable of create news conditions of modelling of the subject and of the world" the images put by the creator in his profile also can be considered virtual."

(PARENTE, 1999)

However, for Lévy that creativity, as well like the productivity of the virtual, would only emerge from the intervention of the act of human reading, since that would consider the available text in the digital support as something of the sphere of the possible and of the real. In spite of many believe that was created with the appearance of the Web, the concept of link texts existed since the years 60, by Theodor Nelson inspired already by Roland Barthes. Second the even, "by hypertext, I understand written not sequential - a text with several conducts that permits readers to make choices, and that are better wellread in an interactive screen. Popularly, they are conceived like a series of texts pieces connected by links that offer the reader different conducts." Thus is applicable the concept, not just to the own layout of Facebook, where the links are clearly abundant with the intention of create dynamics in the webpage, instead of be entirely static.

"We are route to the construction of the dynamic

ideography (Lévy, 1998), in which new simulations, new representations, new movements, icons and narrative join in that task of produce enunciated and sense." (MONTEIRO, 2004)

The navigation in the site functions basically through these hyperlinks, in other words, wherever do we want to accede, add friends or text messages, we should necessarily use these nodes, as would say Lévy, or links. However the concept gains much more when refers to the contents published or shared by the users but in that case, almost always refers to hypermedia, that only adds sound and image to the

definition of hypertext.

The majority of the links I shared possessed this

characteristic because the pattern of post takes a fixed place for a thumbnail.

The majority of the contents posted on Facebook are hypermediatic: photographs, film, music. These two complementary concepts become crucial in the creation of the own site but also "permit to the reader perform freely detours, escapes, instant jumps to others virtual locals of the net, in an economic, comfortable, and practical way." (KOCH, 2005)

Up to date with the concepts previously applied and intimately linked to the hyperlinks finds yet the interactivity, characteristically of the Web 2,0 and of the social nets. In a general scope interactivity characterizes by “situates in a space-time in whose ambit is established in one field of common action in which the subjects involved should be able to enter contact among them. It is likewise fundamental the capacity of action of each subject that should be in conditions to influence in the successive development of the interaction determining it with its action: each action of a subject should constitute the premise of the actions carried out subsequently by the others. Finally, the interaction is carried out on the base of a series of rules and could introduce changes in the context."

(VITTADINI, 1995)

However, being a generalized concept, applies-itself to too much situations by what becomes important restrain the concept to the cyber area, to the Communication Mediated by Computer (CMC, Computer-Mediated Communication) and the Interaction Human-Computer (HCI, Human Computer Interaction). "In reality, interactivity is to main characteristic of the new technologies (online and offline) and has for base the hypertext – to written nonlinear and not-sequential." (AMARAL, 2005)

In this context, Brenda Laurel (1990) defined the interactivity as the

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capacity of human beings in participate and interact in actions that are unrolled in contexts of representation in screens. Like this, interactivity presumes a bipolarity that, in practical terms, is given to the user the possibility to participate like receiver but also as transmitter of contents/information. The intuitive interface of the social net in analysis clearly promotes this plan through the creation of applications that, by example, permits the synchronic communication through the chat and the asynchronous communication through the publication of contents in the mural. In all of the contents published by the user in its Facebook’s page is possible to comment on and/or share.

USER IMAGES

All the images published by the author in her profile since its creation makes a total of three hundred and five. These images will be subdivided in definite categories as journeys, house, family and friends, individualities, art, memes and you quote. The categorization will be deed through the obvious specificities. Obviously this kind of categorization can only be deed with extreme knowledge of cause as is this case, seen that the account of the analysed user is from the author. Follow itself examples of each category.

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Of the pictures analysed, barely are inserted in the predicted categories part of them being that the majority, eighty pictures, is inserted in the category of journeys, fortyone images are photographs captured in home, thirty-three pictures concern individuality in the more varied areas (James Dean, Oscar Wilde or Lham) are some of the examples), twenty and two pictures show fragments or works of art, in the sense-common one (healthy example fragments of Film, illustrations or images of paintings) and finally seventeen memes and quotes whose main information is nearly always contained in text. In twenty-six of the images I appear accompanied by friends or family. The remaining images are related to diverse areas that do not fit in none of the formed categories and that are little prominent for create another one, by example gastronomy or sport. Other barely are not important to categorize-them because it won’t help us to find certain answer but they will be important in the next phase that consists in divide only the photographs of the Facebook between the ones that the own user appears and the others that does not appear. Of all the images published by me in the profile I appear in one hundred photographs, number that in percentage approach of the 33 points.

CONCLUSION

This brief research about the power of image, divided into two variants, in Facebook allows me to answer some questions but also to raise some another questions. First of all, becomes important to refer that Facebook layout is designed and configured in a way to promote interactivity, not only with itself but also between users. A great example is that everything published by a user can be commented on, except if the user changed account settings. It also tend to be more and more dynamic, for instance, the new architecture allows users to see the all activity of a friend in Facebook by a timeline where we only need to select a month or a year (we can compare it to archive in blogs). The idea was certainly to create a bio of every person in Facebook because the first date shown in timeline is our birthday, followed by our parent’s name, our educational institutions and then the year of our sign in or registration in this social network. However there are another great differences in the new layout dealing with icons. Divided into two columns, right and left, with many boxes, the images published in the wall seems bigger and occupies more space in screen, getting more attention from the viewer. Still on profile page now there are thumbnails of the images of every contents presented in a crucial position for eye tracking the viewer, almost in the centre of the screen belonging to right side. Can’t be said that Facebook is more textual or more iconic because it’s just a relation of complementarity by anchorage, using Roland Barthes therm. In the specific case of the author’s profile many published images have been observed, however they were consider in target groups and as a whole. Accordingly to the results favourite image category of this user is ‘Travels’, followed by ‘Homeportraits’ and ‘Individualities’. Interpreting them Facebook is a hangar where we publish our favourite images, not the more beautiful to us or the more different but only images of something remarkable and interesting for us and that reflects ourselves somehow by identification or reflects the way we want to be seen by other users. This is actually the same problematic because we tend to be narcissistic in the photos posted on Facebook. Author’s profile page contains one hundred photographs where she appears and this is obviously an expressive number although it only represents one third of every published images. Knowingly, the goal of these photos is to get attention in us and create, almost always, a positive image of us. I mean, nobody posts

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a photo thinking that’s unattractive or uninteresting, as well as nobody wants to be related with these kind of adjectives. And this is supposed on the idea of social network; if we want to have friends or to get comments on we need to create, at least, a positive image. In this way were created the ‘like’ button, which provides the user to proof in a very simple way that the image was somehow pleasant for him. This simple way is much more used but curious is that almost every comment are just to emphasize those opinions in a way. Those collections of images available on profile can be compared to images in the books, but not obviously physically, because we can’t touch them or handle it. However albums can be comparative to books in a story tell mood, in a narrative way. Summing up, image has been gained more and more power in Facebook. Nevertheless hypermedia concept could be more explored in order to enhance the iconic message promoting and popularizing the image as a more frequently response.

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