The Social Life of Plant Photos: Uses and Meanings of Digital Snapshots in an Online Community
Koh, Kyung-Nan (2024) “The Social Life of Plant Photos: Uses and Meanings of Digital Snapshots in an Online Community
https://doi.org/10.24825/SI.77.4
ABSTRACT
Based on digital anthropological method of participant observation in an online plant community in South Korea, this paper explores the semiotic cultural process whereby personal mobile phone snapshots which capture the existence and presence of plants facilitate the education of attention towards perception of plant growth and the production of practical sentience, via the communicative and socio-relational activity of sharing and circulating. Anonymous indoor gardening hobbyists gathered by their common interest in a specific plant actively utilize snapshot photos, online and offline, as a visual medium effectively capturing and conveying communicative messages. Collectively exploring the object of photos in dialogic communicative interactions, these hobbyists learn to see plant movements that are otherwise inaccessible and acquire access to a wide range of phytosemiotic information and natural science knowledge specific to plant species. They also access various species and individual plants more efficiently through snapshot circulation. Using ethnographic participant observation and interview data, this study reveals that photos are constructed as indexes during these processes and analyzes their semiotic meanings which are differently determined relative to three major communicative purposes of photo use. The snapshots here, which contain relatively natural and unaltered ‘as is’ images of plants, are produced and interpreted as signs that stand for the dynamic state or movement of plant growth, the physically connected spatiotemporal reality where various species can be discovered and acquired, and the evidence of gift exchange for propagation. Through the continuous exchange and circulation of such photographs, plant hobbyists gradually acquire the ability to perceive plant growth and develop practical sentience that they as caregivers who grow and manage plants can embody.