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Digital Photography and Identity of Hong Kong Females: A Case Study of Facebook Images

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explore how multipurpose applications of smartphones combined with growing insights of socio-cultural transformations have affected personal photography of Hong Kong females. About 80 digital photographs taken and distributed via the social networking site Facebook were analysed within the social-semiotic theory of representation and communication. The major finding is that photographic images have shown a remarkable degree of homogeneity of representational practices used by females in Hong Kong for self-remodelling. Taking photographs seems no longer primarily to provide factual evidence of a human activity (‘image as record’), but is increasingly becoming a tool for an individual’s identity formation and communication (‘image as construct’). It is argued that the increased economic and social status of Hong Kong females has spawned new ways of manipulating digital photographs disseminated over the internet.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Admittedly, this is a relatively small sample of data given the ubiquity of digital images. However, careful consideration has been undertaken to make sure that the images are selected in order to achieve the aim of the current study which is to explore both changing production and consumption practices in presenting/representing oneself in connection to gendered identity formation and changing socio-economic status of females in Hong Kong. Thus the choice of images has been made in relation to four important factors: (1) permission for reproducing these images for research purposes; (2) age of female subjects ranging from early 20s to early 30s; (3) education level at university or above; (4) full-time employment. The sampling of the data was undertaken for one year from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2015 based on news feed of the author’s personal Facebook page. The results presented are part of a larger ongoing research study which aims to examine social media photography of females in Hong Kong.

  2. 2.

    Due to copyright and anonymity reasons, the images taken by the female subjects in the research study are not reproduced here but appear as illustrations only.

  3. 3.

    For copyright reasons the advertising images illustrated in Figs. 6.8 and 6.9 are not reproduced here, only represented as diagrams.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong

    May Wong

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Wong, M. (2019). Digital Photography and Identity of Hong Kong Females: A Case Study of Facebook Images. In: Multimodal Communication. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_6

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15427-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15428-8

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