CR10_ Dijck_The Culture of Connectivity. 2011

Abstract:

Photo sharing sites such as Flickr are commonly regarded either as spaces where communal views and experiences evolve as a result of picture exchange, or as visual archives where sharing pictures in the present naturally leads to a collective interpretation of the past. In this article,  it regarding Flickr as a social media platform annex database that enables the construction of infinite connections. Platforms such as Flickr are firmly embedded in a culture of connectivity, a culture where the powerful structures of social networking sites are gradually penetrating the core of our daily routines and practices. What is often called ‘collective memory’ or ‘cultural heritage’ in relation to digital photo sharing sites is largely the result of data linked up by means of computer code and institutional protocols.

Some useful quotes:
-  ‘Share your photos. Watch the world’ is the motto featured on Flickr, currently the world’s largest photo sharing website.
-  As a social network, Flickr's design allows users to upload photos by email, mobile phones or through the web, disseminate pictures through RSS or blogs, comment on postings, join groups, declare friends, click on favorite photos, and so on.
- Social media platforms such as Flickr are often promoted as a ‘collective effort’ where users engage in relationships and through which they establish communal experiences, resulting in collective memories. 
- I would like to take up Hoskins’s concept and expand it from the specifics of memory to what I call the ‘culture of connectivity’ – a post-broadcast, networked culture where social interactions and cultural products are inseparably enmeshed in technological (and legal-economic) systems. 
- Some researchers have lauded Flickr’s potential as a platform for individuals to develop and shape their aesthetic norms and discuss their personal inclinations to discover common taste (Murray, 2008).
- In more than one way, Flickr has become an instrument to shape common views of the world. As such, photo sharing sites appear to fall between ‘an information system that might be understood within the paradigms of information studies and a mass medium that can be approached by methods prevalent within media or cultural studies’ (Cox et al., 2008). This observation leads us to raise the question of whether and how Flickr and similar platforms also shape what is commonly called ‘collective experiences’.
- Ever since Flickr’s popularity as a photo sharing website exploded in 2006, its function as a picture repository as well as a site for community building has not gone unnoticed by so-called ‘memory institutions’: archives, libraries and museums. The major role of memory institutions is to ‘link the past with the present’ and to ‘interpret and contextualize cultural heritage for it to become meaningful to people in their present lives’ (Manzuch, 2009: 3). 

This reading  through the case study of Flicker to illustrate that social media platform is popular now, the social media have effect on people's lives, the power of social media immense. Because my project need to related to culture and social, therefore, I will explore more the impact about the show window's culture.