"Doing it for the 'gram?" The representational politics of popular humanitarianism

• Main Authors: Woods, Orlando, SHEE, Siew Ying
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Digital photography; popular humanitarianism; affective economy of difference; Instagram; Singapore; Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility; Photography; Social Media
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3278; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4536/viewcontent/DoingItFortheGram_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper explores how digital photography – the practice of taking pictures and sharing them via social media – can give rise to representational politics. These politics are pronounced when disadvantaged people and places are the objects of digital representation, as they become (dis)empowered by being implicated in the affective economy of difference. Empirically, we examine the representational practices that Singaporean voluntourists, and companies that organise overseas humanitarian projects, engage in. We highlight how their motivations for engaging with these projects can be obfuscated by the opportunity to generate influence on Instagram, which can then shape the practice of popular humanitarianism. In particular, it can cause encounters with difference to be (cu)rated, influence to be (re)produced, and representation to therefore be (de)valued.