Social media photography and forgetting relationship

This thesis focuses on the relationship between a new type of photography so called social media photography and forgetting, the former of which is argued to have recently emerged due to the rise of social networks. Social media photography, which has become a phenomenon in our lives, is a type of photography that is subject to rapid production and consumption processes. This high level of production and consumption needs to be handled and evaluated by various disciplines. This thesis is mainly take on examining the production and consumption of social media photography that is in a proximate relationship with the process of remembering and forgetting. Consisting of three parts, the thesis poses these questions: What is the effect of photo producing/sharing in social media on memory? What is the connection between social media photography and forgetting? Findings suggest that crucial to the relationship between social media photography and forgetting is smartphones as an essential medium. Whilst photography has accelerated the production process as it has become an integrated feature into smartphones, it surges the quantity and quality of photographic images in social media. The further discussion scrutinises the sustainability between photography-based social networks, such as Instagram and its derivatives, and the relations of forgetting, remembering and memory. Whilst the subject is constantly reminded of what she has forgotten, she witnesses the dominance of a fictional order being constructed in a way as not to allow her to construct new memory. The latter is emphasised as the structure of 'discontinuous universe' where everything is temporary. This system has introduced the artificial memory system into our lives, which includes the processes of remembering and forgetting, works like human memory and always stands with us. Due to this feature provided by smart mobile phones, the thesis concludes a strong relationship between social media photography, remembering and forgetting by analysing the four basic phenomena such as multitasking, the Google effect, image bombardment, and hyper-present.