Kimberly Hall is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Wofford College. Her work on social media has appeared in Television and New Media and Women and Performance. She is currently completing a book on the historical development of observational media projects.
Authors | Kimberly Hall
Articles on Amodern by Kimberly Hall
SNAPCHAT’S FAILED EPHEMERALITY
Snapchat is a social media app that built its popularity and reputation on a key feature: disappearing messages. The ephemerality that defined the platform since its 2011 launch has undergone a series of modifications as the company has grown, resulting in ever more archival practices. Through a reading of the discourse cultivated in the interface design, and the company’s policies and corporate blog, this article explores how ephemerality in Snapchat is not an expression of presence and absence, but an experience of presentness. Ephemerality within the app is no longer a material reality, but instead an ethos and aesthetic principle that reimagines how time should be experienced in social media.