Social media as a means of visual biographical performance and biographical work

Abstract

With the rise of social media, forms of communication emerge that are increasingly defined by the use of images. From the perspective of biographical research and visual sociology, the article addresses the question in how far biographical work becomes visible while visual biographies are formed in digitalized visual communication. It proposes a way how these processes can be studied with interpretive biographical and visual methodologies. Based on empirical material from Austria, we show how biographical performances in social media differ, in form and content, from conventional verbal-narratives, and how they simultaneously relate to each other. We present a case study that shows in depth how images on Facebook and Instagram become biographically relevant and what kind of biographical work takes place there. The methodological procedure consists of an innovative triangulation that combines visual analyses, biographical-narrative interviews and media interviews. The aim of this article is to give insights into the biographical significance and biographical work of visual biographies in social media, and to propose by triangulation of different data analysis a way of exploring the intertwining of narrative and visual biographies.