Photo-imaging and tagging the act of studying

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the study practices and places of learning as tagged and pictured in flickr.com. Digital imaging technologies and the Internet have recently expanded options for sharing text, photos, music and videos. Personal photography through the popular image-sharing site, flickr.com, allows this study to engage with the visible materials and visual orientation and representation of the act of studying. How is studying done becomes the focus to visualize the socio-technical relations that order university settings and literacy practices with photos tagged as studying in Flickr. Photo- imaging and tagging come together in ways that reveal how individuals represent themselves in self-portraits captured or pictured in the act of studying – which includes reading, writing, sitting; and in particular study places or spaces – in bedrooms, libraries, cafes and outdoors. It is informed by photographs taken and uploaded in Flickr. Photos assigned with the tag 'studying' and 'self' were analysed. Only 94 of the total 181 resulting items were considered for this paper. Additional tags that were associated to photos tagged as studying were searched further. The paper concludes with a discussion on how study practices pictured through Flickr remains to be centered around reading textbooks, writing notes and highlighting text, and seated at desks or tables where things could be spread out and not necessarily with a computer or a laptop or any other portable device in the 'photo-framed' self-portrait of studying in Flickr.