Capturing outdoor experiences using social networking sites: Exploring students’ practices through photo-elicitation

Social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Instagram are relatively recent and latterly contested phenomena. With images and text of people’s lives posted across many mediums, the ability to keep ourselves ‘updated’ appears to have more intrinsic importance and is changing the way we see ourselves. The line between our digital and real lives is becoming increasingly blurred in the public representation of ourselves and in the portrayal of the ‘possible’ self. This interpretive phenomenological research investigates the ways in which people capture their experiences in the outdoors through photographs, and how they select those to post on SNSs. The pilot study showed differences between males and females in the choices they make with a main study showing cultural background and age influential on their perceived intrinsic importance for them of sharing photographs on open or private sites. The data illustrate the reasons for taking and posting photographs and the influence of social recognition and reaction. For older students, there is evidence of deeper meaning in photographs and where and for what reasons they do or do not post them on SNSs; for Spanish males, there is evidence of extrinsic reasons for posting images on SNSs. The research interrogates the reasons for these differences and the influence of SNSs for posting and sharing photographs to wider audiences.