ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with images on the smartphone and their role in everyday smartphone-mediated communication. The chapter initially argues for the existence of visual explicatures and visual implicatures in a similar way to verbal counterparts. Then, a section introduces the evolution of camera practices leading to today’s massive use of smartphone cameras, with attributes such as ephemerality, banality, a tendency to the present and synchronicity, and emphasis on physical location. Then, as in other chapters, a number of contextual constraints for camera practices are explained, both interface and user related. Next in the chapter, an important distinction is made between “relevance of image–referent contiguity” and “relevance of user–audience contiguity (through the image),” depending on the objective relevance of the image itself. Next, some non-propositional effects of smartphone camera use are listed and commented upon. The chapter ends with an analysis of one of the most typical camera practices nowadays: the selfie.
