Tag: filters

Digital Multiples and Social Media

In this post, we unpack the meaning and many works of creating and maintaining digital multiples, a term we coined in our recent ethnography, A Filtered Life, to explore the multiple, dynamic expressions of self across online contexts (Nichter and Taylor 2022). This concept emerged from our ethnographic research with more than 100 college students exploring sociality, emotional expression, and online identity work. Our methods for this study included in-depth interviews, focus groups, writing prompts, and long-term participant observation in students’ social media sites. (read more...)

Beauty Filters: New Tech, Old Problems

Retaining a youthful appearance is a laborious and painful exercise, often rife with invisible labor. Digital beauty tech has made it much easier. Rather than altering our own faces through cosmetic procedures, we now have a conduit — an online persona — that can easily be touched up with the help of beauty editing apps or filters. This has done little to challenge ageist prejudices but has offered an avenue out of old age in the form of customization. In offering up this tech, the beauty industry can be seen to perform a bait-and-switch, displacing the weight of beauty standards from physical appearance onto our consumer choices. (read more...)