What will our web feature be about?

The central focus of our web feature is how online image sharing is shaping our sense of self; both the internal self that we construct, and the external self that the world sees.

The issue we are raising is that the web is becoming increasingly visual. New online platforms are being set up to facilitate image sharing, and existing social networking platforms such as Facebook are tailoring their layout to suit a more visual user-group.

We will approach this issue by exploring the implications of the shift towards more visual modes of communication. We will investigate these implications from two angles. On one hand, we will look at how others perceive us through the images we share, and on the other hand, how we construct ourselves through these same images.

The issue we are addressing is newsworthy, largely because we are living in the age of the visual web. 2011 and 2012 saw the rise of new image sharing platforms, and Pinterest has been termed "the fastest growing site in history."

There are several academic papers and publications which deal with the ways that social networking, blogging and online forums shape an individual's identity and sense of self. McCullagh in her paper, 'Blogging: Presentation and Privacy', investigates the ability of an individual to present multiple 'selves' on the web. Other theorists have explored the ways that the Internet allows us to mask certain aspects of ourselves. Few publications deal exclusively with the image, and most existing papers are targeted at academic audiences. We want to introduce the issue to the ordinary citizen.

The purpose of our feature is both to document the shift towards a more visual web, and to educate audiences on our findings.

Since online image sharing is only a recent trend, there is little out there on its power and prominence. We will speak to sociologists, conduct interviews with avid users of these new platforms, and take personal journeys into the world of image sharing by personally engaging with a particular platform over the designated weeks. Our approach will combine academic research with personal experience.

We aim to use the online medium in innovative ways by playing with the internal self versus external self juxtaposition, and representing this on the site using the theme of doors. The inside of the doors will look at how we shape ourselves internally through image sharing, and the outside of the doors will look at how image sharing plays out in the real world.