ABSTRACT
This chapter explores social media platforms as increasingly vast and ordinary infrastructures for how people visually experience urban locality. Drawing on a mixed-method project (including image visualization and qualitative observation) exploring the mediation of a controversial cycling scheme in East London, UK, social media imagery is conceptualized and analysed in three overlapping stages: (1) as discrete digital objects; (2) as objects mobilized through particular user practices; and (3) as objects and practices operating and appearing within platform interface environments. Drawing inspiration from phenomenological perspectives on media and technology, the chapter shows how these objects, practices and environments of social media visuality create conditions for experiencing, as well as addressing oneself towards locality, not only spatially but also temporally.
