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Social media has shifted human communication towards the visual at the expense of text and voice. Now a photo can become the core of our conversation.
Brazil
In this film, taken from our e-learning course, Juliano Spyer compares our Brazilian and Chilean fieldsites. He shows how understanding people's aspirations helps to explain new visual genres of posting.
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Poverty and mockery
Trinidad
In Trinidad, as in Brazil, most posts on social media are visual in nature, tending to attract more `likes' than textual posts. There is also considerable emphasis on looking good, as seen in this film.
India
Thanks to the emphasis on visual content, in our Indian fieldsite people who are completely illiterate are able to use social media.
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Overcoming illiteracy
South China
Although factory workers are literate, they may lack confidence as a result of limited schooling so that images are almost as important as text in communication.
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Expressing yourself with images
Turkey
Images can give online communication the same sense of proximity and intensity as face-to-face communication, as we found in Turkey with families who are physically separated.
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The intensity of family relations
