Paper short abstract:

This study investigates how embodied experience is shaping and shaped by audiovisual encounters resulting from collaborating with social media feeds. We inquire how filters remediate the representation of bodies and embodied experience by affording new ways of seeing and relating to one’s own body.

Paper long abstract:

Social media platforms, such as Instagram and TikTok, provide users with a variety of filters that allow them to modify their appearance, thus reinforcing and perpetuating idealized notions of beauty. This research investigates how embodied experience is shaping and shaped by (audio-)visual encounters resulting from collaborating with algorithmic systems. Employing a collaborative ethnographic approach, we inquire how filters remediate the representation of bodies and embodied experience by affording new ways of seeing and relating to one’s own body. In our ongoing project we collaborate with student assistants as both researchers and participants, thus experimenting with (auto-)ethnographic methods, such as participatory observation, keeping and analyzing field notes as well as media diaries. The collaboration with student assistants enables us to better understand how ever-evolving networks of digital practices and algorithms co-curate image feeds and produce intersubjectivity. A collaborative approach adapts to the highly dynamic and personalized experience of social media, leverages the students’ familiarity with digital practices as social media’s key audience, and facilitates an environment of continuous learning with and from each other. By exploring the intricate entanglement of embodied experience, representation of bodies, and algorithmic systems this study aims to provide insights into how these elements coalesce to shape notions of beauty, offering a valuable contribution to anthropological discourses about how technology and AI-based algorithms affect everyday lives.