Discussing the social uses of Instagram, this book shows how visuality is changing people’s perception of the world and their mediated lives, illustrating how the platform shapes new social relationships, marketing techniques, privacy and surveillance concerns, and representations of the self, arguing for the development of new mobile visualities.

Discussing the social uses of Instagram, this book shows how visuality is changing people’s perception of the world and their mediated lives, illustrating how the platform shapes new social relationships, marketing techniques, privacy and surveillance concerns, and representations of the self, arguing for the development of new mobile visualities.

Instagram is at the heart of global digital culture, having made selfies, filters and square frames an inescapable part of everyday life since it was launched in 2010. In the first book-length examination of Instagram, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin trace how this quintessential mobile photography app has developed as a platform and a culture. They consider aspects such as the new visual social media aesthetics, the rise of Influencers and new visual economies, and the complex politics of the platform as well as examining how Instagram's users change their use of the platform over time and respond to evolving features. The book highlights the different ways Instagram is used by subcultural groups around the world, and how museums, restaurants and public spaces are striving to be 'Insta-worthy'. Far from just capturing milestones and moments, the authors argue that Instagram has altered the ways people communicate and share, while also creating new approaches to marketing, advertising, politics and the design of spaces and venues. Rich with grounded examples from across the world, from birth pictures to selfies at funerals, Instagram is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB YA PICK Filled with all of the action, emotion, and lyrical writing that brought readers to Sky in the Deep, New York Times bestselling author Adrienne Young returns with Fable, the first book in this new captivating duology. Welcome to a world made dangerous by the sea and by those who wish to profit from it. Where a young girl must find her place and her family while trying to survive in a world built for men. As the daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows, the sea is the only home seventeen-year-old Fable has ever known. It’s been four years since the night she watched her mother drown during an unforgiving storm. The next day her father abandoned her on a legendary island filled with thieves and little food. To survive she must keep to herself, learn to trust no one and rely on the unique skills her mother taught her. The only thing that keeps her going is the goal of getting off the island, finding her father and demanding her rightful place beside him and his crew. To do so Fable enlists the help of a young trader named West to get her off the island and across the Narrows to her father. But her father’s rivalries and the dangers of his trading enterprise have only multiplied since she last saw him and Fable soon finds that West isn't who he seems. Together, they will have to survive more than the treacherous storms that haunt the Narrows if they're going to stay alive. Fable takes you on a spectacular journey filled with romance, intrigue and adventure.

”Jen Robin is not just an organizer—she is a teacher and a healer. As she helps sort our ‘stuff’ she is also sorting our values, emotions, relationships, and dreams. She is a magician and this book will work magic on your home and life.” - Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed In this essential guide, the creative force behind the popular organization company Life in Jeneral reveals her emotionally engaged approach to decluttering—a unique process that empowers people to re-envision their spaces to suit their evolving needs. Life is about connection, not collection. Jen Robin’s company, Life in Jeneral, focuses on the “soul work” of home organization—the psychological and emotional foundation necessary for creating a streamlined and sustainable lifestyle. For Jen, change comes from within—a process that to succeed, must begin with the heart. Americans are spending more time at home than ever before, and many have come to realize that their living spaces aren’t serving them. We have too many things, resulting in physical and mental clutter. And the organizational strategies we try only go so far, leaving us feeling disconnected and disheartened. Life in Jeneral helps you build healthier mental habits that allow us to break free from the clutter, while providing traditional strategies to get—and stay—organized. Beautifully designed and featuring examples from Jen’s personal experiences and those of her clients, Life in Jeneral teaches us how to: Flip common mental blocks that prevent us from organizational success Identify and tackle “clutter magnets”—the spaces where things seem to gather Discover common emotional baggage keyed to specific types of clutter Organize and evolve specific spaces in the home, room by room Life in Jeneral offers a holistic approach to organization; once we understand what we want from our spaces—how they can nurture and support our emotional well-being—we can create a home that feels both practical and joyful.

We now live in a world where all aspects of everyday life are thoroughly mediated by digital technologies. Making sense of digital life is accordingly an essential undertaking for social science and humanities scholars. This multidisciplinary book provides an essential guide to researching digital life: Orienting readers with respect to methodologies, research design, and research ethics. Detailing key research methods, including interviews, surveys, ethnographies, walking methodologies, arts-based and participatory approaches, historical analysis, data visualisation, mapping and data analytics. Demonstrating these methods in action in real-world studies that have investigated apps and interfaces, social and locative media, mobilities, smart cities, and digital labour and work. The authors provide: • Non-Eurocentric perspectives and case studies from diverse disciplines • Annotated further reading to help you situate your research alongside existing research in your field • An outline of future directions for researching digital life. Accessible in style and richly illustrated, the chapters provide a wealth of key insights and practical information to ensure research projects are successfully planned and implemented.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the pervasiveness of digital media into our everyday lives is undermining cherished notions of politics and ethics. Is this concern unfounded? In this daring new book, Tim Markham argues that what it means to live ethically and politically is realized through, not in spite of, the everyday experience of digital life. Drawing on a wide range of philosophers from Hegel and Heidegger to Levinas and Butler, he investigates what is really at stake amid the constant distractions of our media-saturated world, the way we present ourselves to that world through social media, and the relentless march of data into every aspect of our lives. A provocation to think differently about digital media and what it is doing to us, Digital Life offers timely insights into distraction and compassion fatigue, privacy and surveillance, identity and solidarity. It is essential reading for scholars and advanced students of media and communication.

Settler societies habitually frame Indigenous people as ‘a people of the past’—their culture somehow ‘frozen’ in time, their identities tied to static notions of ‘authenticity’, and their communities understood as ‘in decline’. But this narrative erases the many ways that Indigenous people are actively engaged in future-orientated practice, including through new technologies. Indigenous Digital Life offers a broad, wide-ranging account of how social media has become embedded in the lives of Indigenous Australians. Centring on ten core themes—including identity, community, hate, desire and death—we seek to understand both the practice and broader politics of being Indigenous on social media. Rather than reproducing settler narratives of Indigenous ‘deficiency’, we approach Indigenous social media as a space of Indigenous action, production, and creativity; we see Indigenous social media users as powerful agents, who interact with and shape their immediate worlds with skill, flair and nous; and instead of being ‘a people of the past’, we show that Indigenous digital life is often future-orientated, working towards building better relations, communities and worlds. This book offers new ideas, insights and provocations for both students and scholars of Indigenous studies, media and communication studies, and cultural studies.

Discussing the social uses of Instagram, this book shows how visuality is changing people’s perception of the world and their mediated lives, illustrating how the platform shapes new social relationships, marketing techniques, privacy and surveillance concerns, and representations of the self, arguing for the development of new mobile visualities.

What does an art history of Instagram look like? Appreciation Post reveals how Instagram shifts long-established ways of interacting with images. Tara Ward argues Instagram is a structure of the visual, which includes not just the process of looking, but what can be seen and by whom. She examines features of Instagram use, including the effect of scrolling through images on a phone, the skill involved in taking an “Instagram-worthy” picture, and the desires created by following influencers, to explain how the constraints imposed by Instagram limit the selves that can be displayed on it. The proliferation of technical knowledge, especially among younger women, revitalizes on Instagram the myth of the masculine genius and a corresponding reinvigoration of a masculine audience for art. Ward prompts scholars of art history, gender studies, and media studies to attend to Instagram as a site of visual expression and social consequence. Through its insightful comparative analysis and acute close reading, Appreciation Post argues for art history’s value in understanding the contemporary world and the visual nature of identity today.