iPhoneography as Visual Literacy: How Image-Making Practices on Social Media Encourage Creative Growth

iPhoneography is the practice of capturing, enhancing, and sharing images using a smartphone device. With the emergence of image-based social media platforms that highlight the experience of making images, it becomes critical to examine how the act of creating images enhances comprehension of visuals. The practice of iPhoneography and image-based social media platforms bring forth new directions for studying visual literacy. The field of visual literacy can be used as a framework to examine both the value of reading and making images. Through the use of purposive sampling and interviews, the study examined the experiences of twelve image-makers to understand how the making and the continuous exposure to them can contribute to enhanced creative growth.