Louis Vuitton has done it, Cristiano Ronaldo too and Lady Gaga anyway. We are talking about images that have achieved almost cult status on social networks and are gradually spreading through ever wider circles of friends. The portal from which the examples originate: the Swiss social network site Festzeit.ch. What is special about this portal is how open-heartedly the users deal with pictures. True to the motto "you show what you have". Unlike on Facebook, you cannot restrict the privacy of your pictures. There are therefore no limits to curiosity. And conversely, users have to be even more careful about which pictures they show on their profile page.
Promotional images from the cultural and consumer market also attract attention in this milieu from time to time. The success of such images is reflected in the so-called "photo charts", a ranking system with which Festzeit has made viewing images the main thing. The way it works is as simple as it is inspiring: every picture uploaded by a user is rated according to how many other users click on it. The photo charts then show the most popular uploads of the last 24 hours, the last week, the last month and so on. Anyone who likes such an image can link it to their personal online photo album with a single click, where it may also be discovered and linked to by friends. An opportunity for viral marketing that should interest social media managers.
I post, therefore I am
The driving force behind such image migrations is not so much the clever social media marketing of individual stars and brands. Rather, a typical characteristic of users themselves deserves attention: their constantly recurring need to create a profile for themselves online. "Writing oneself into being online" is what Dannah Boyd, an American social media researcher from the very beginning, once called it. She was quick to point out how difficult even "digital natives" sometimes find it to assert their ideas of identity in a technical environment: an environment in which flashy images and snappy comments have to make up for what a confident appearance and a firm voice achieve elsewhere.
In short, if you want to master "impression management" on social network sites, you have to learn to reassert your character with digital set pieces. Images of brands and celebrities are grateful creators of meaning - for the users themselves as well as for their online friends. Because consciously or unconsciously, we always proclaim our own extravagance, our own football infatuation and our own "I don't indulge in anything else" weakness when we go online with Lady Gaga, Ronaldo or Louis Vuitton.
Market of images - images of the market?
Not all users access "foreign" offers of meaning equally frequently or equally seriously. So the question is: How important is the market in the stream of images that are clicked through social media every day? And how do users deal with the images?
This was one of the topics addressed by a research project carried out by the University of Basel between 2008 and 2011 on behalf of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The team led by Professor Klaus Neumann-Braun, a sociologist and media scientist, focused on images of teenagers and young adults online. Festzeit was of particular importance here.
With just under 120,000 official users, Festzeit is a dwarf among social network sites and is only used very locally, mainly in the WEMF region of Westmittelland, as a representative survey by GfK showed. The platform is most popular among 15 to 20-year-olds. Festzeit therefore gives a good impression of which images young people in German-speaking Switzerland are interested in on Web 2.0, as all images can be viewed and commented on without limits.
In the study, a random sample of 6,000 images was selected from over 200,000 image uploads - collected over three two-week periods spread over a year. An initial screening divided the images into two categories: Firstly, a distinction was made between images from the cultural and consumer market, such as those circulated by companies, stars and the media, and secondly, private images that users had taken themselves.
My image, my picture
The analysis shows that the promo images that achieve cult status are isolated cases. Barely a fifth of the images circulating on Festzeit take up content from the culture/consumer market. And when they do, top stars such as Lady Gaga or Cristiano Ronaldo dominate this category; Twilight hero Robert Pattinson is also relatively popular in digital photo albums. When it comes to consumer brands, international brands such as Louis Vuitton, Adidas and Converse in particular are making the leap into social networks. The fact that such images can be found on a portal popular with young people is consistent with the results of other surveys conducted at the same time. Studies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland have shown that the way in which social media is used depends heavily on the age of the user. This also applies to images. Images of the cultural/consumer market in particular are increasingly found in the profiles of teenagers and young adults - i.e. those users who are in puberty or adolescence. During this time, the search for one's own identity is strongly directed outwards; cliques of friends are formed. "Belonging" is the credo. And popular market icons are one way of ensuring the social connectivity of one's own image-making. But is that why people talk online about their favorite tracks on the new Gaga single? Not a chance.
Private life as a topic of conversation
Looking at images does not necessarily go hand in hand with commentary-rich image conversations. At least not in the case of images from the cultural/consumer market, i.e. the images contributed by advertisers. What moves young people the most are the images that also circulate the most on Festzeit. 80 to 87 percent of the images refer to the private lives of the users. These are self-portraits, often taken at home in front of the bathroom mirror, or documentary pictures of events such as parties, school trips or family vacations by the sea. These images tend to come from close social circles. And it is these "close-up" images that regularly provoke comments.
Using statistical methods of network analysis, it was possible to link the countless user comments with each other, so that it became visible how users usually interact with each other.
Contrary to what one might expect from the radical openness of the portal, the picture conversations take place within a very manageable framework. Apart from individual cases, the pictures bring the average Festzeit user into regular contact with only 10.1 other users (regular = at least 2 times within 2 weeks). For comparison: Festzeit users have an average of 200.1 entries in their friends lists. The bottom line is that users' image activities are much smaller than one would expect based on their friends lists.
Tit for tat
Ultimately, only everyday offline life can explain why users focus their online activities on such a manageable and constant environment. Although we practice "impression management" online with new means and virtually "visualize" it, we cannot simply turn our backs on our real life world. Not on social network sites. And not as long as our online friends include the ten real (best) friends we meet every day. What starts to work in this context is a system of social obligations that we are familiar with from everyday offline life. If you buy me a beer, the next round is on me. If you comment on my picture, I'll comment on yours. The network analyses showed how online interactions are characterized by such reciprocal references, whereby a central component of the picture conversations is that you can present your friendships to the outside world together - much more clearly than with the friend lists.
Trojan horses from "real life"
Users are therefore happy to post their everyday offline life online. In contrast, they only include a few brands in their self-presentation repertoire on their own initiative. Companies can take advantage of this insight by aligning their social media activities accordingly. Instead of simply compiling information on their Facebook profiles that is also offered on websites and elsewhere, they can use the new channel to create a link between the offline and online worlds. For example, by providing users offline with a personal brand experience that can be easily extended into the online world.
In winter 2010, the fashion label "Polham" demonstrated how this works with a street fashion campaign. The Korean brand staged shoots at various hotspots in Seoul, where a crew of stylists and photographers took pictures of good-looking young passers-by. The campaign was headed by Hyun Jeong Lee, Chief Marketing Strategist at Shinsung Tongsang, the parent company of Polham. "Our primary goal was to preserve people's personal style - that's why we only staged one Polham accessory for each person," emphasizes Lee, who has also shaped social media marketing for labels such as Uniqlo. "Of course, the people photographed were allowed to keep their accessory afterwards." This investment was relatively small, but it paid off: Users picked up on these (subtly) brand-related, fashion statements and spread the images across online networks.
Strategies like these can build on the fact that friends are much less able (and willing) to avoid the images if someone from their own network is involved in person. The system of reciprocal obligations immediately begins to take effect - and gets the network going. Dominic Wirz
The author
Dominic Wirz studied media studies and German language and literature at the University of Basel. He worked as a freelance journalist and later for various advertising agencies in the areas of text and concept. From 2009 to 2011, Wirz researched the topic of social media and images in a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The 29-year-old is currently co-authoring a book on the history of the Basler Zeitung, which is expected to be published by Christoph Merian Verlag in fall 2012. He tweets under the name wirzd.
