The iconic habit. The agency of networked images in social media

Abstract

In the age of social media, we are accustomed to hearing about the uncontrollable visual ‘flood’ unleashed by new technologies. Metaphors such as ‘flood’, ‘wave’, or ‘ocean’ of images convey not only a sense of visual infinity but also of chaotic, unfiltered production. However, if we look more closely, we find that within this vast universe, visual forms tend to repeat themselves. This homogenisation is not neutral. The hypothesis we will defend in this work is that the repetition of images by social media users produces habits of visual consumption and production, ensuring that their attention is captured by the platforms. Drawing on the concept of Bildakt and the classical notion of habit – since habit is constituted through the repetition of acts – I propose the notion of iconic habits to explain this phenomenon. In the digital world, images have agency over us by generating certain habits through their repetition. This phenomenon is closely linked to the design of platforms informed by behavioural science models (Fogg, Eyal). Understanding how iconic habits operate enables us to analyse how users’ attention is captured and how they are transformed into visual machines.