The hypermetrope view: photojournalism in the age of social networks

Abstract

The diffusion of photographs linked to current events through social networks, even before being published in the media, has altered the traditional role of photographers and graphic editors. These photographs, seen by millions of people all over the world and disseminated via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, avoid the graphic editing phase that was once fundamental in any process of journalistic communication, as it is in this phase that images are given concrete and conscious meaning. This means that the photographs are published without any planning strategy or revision of the production, which leads to an uncontrolled use of the journalistic image. But not only has the selection criteria been eliminated with the disappearance of the graphic editor, but also the authorship, with photographers gobbled up by the subjects themselves portrayed, in images where there is no signature or copyright, and where the author's gaze seems to have been displaced from the viewfinder of his camera.