The term Web 2.0 was coined in 2004 to refer to the newly emergent Web sites that relied on the power of user contributions to generate content and build social network connections between individuals and groups. Instead of static Web sites that individuals merely surf around and consume, Web 2.0 applications enable active contributions by users. Examples of Web 2.0 applications are Wikipedia, blogs, MySpace, photoblogs, and photo sharing sites. Many of these also rely on folksonomies, which are user generated tags as a means of categorizing content. In folksonomies, the tags are not limited to a list determined by developers, but emerge from the descriptions attached to items by users. The photo sharing site Flickr, for instance, allows users to tag their own photographs to indicate their content, and then to search or link to other photographs with similar tags.
Published in Chapter:
Digital Photography
Eric T. Meyer (University of Oxford, UK)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 13
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-863-5.ch056
Abstract
Digital photography is a relatively new topic for scholarly study in the area of computer mediated communication. Photographic technologies were only first computerized in the 1990s, but have rapidly supplanted older film technologies for a majority of professional uses. Digital photography has not simply substituted silicon chips for film, however, but has brought about rapid changes throughout the photographic process as photography entered the realm of information technology. This chapter presents a typology for approaching the study of photography as a form of computer mediated communication, and then presents several examples illustrating the consequences digital photography has for amateurs and professionals. Examples include photojournalism, scientific photography, photography in the legal system, and personal photography. The chapter ends with a call for additional research into the social aspects of this ubiquitous form of computer mediated communication.