Gaze and Glow: Exploring Editing Processes on Social Media through Interactive Exhibition

2025-07-04

AI Summary

This study investigates the obscured user labor and associated affective experiences in social media editing, examining how audience attention reciprocally shapes editorial practices. Method: Integrating narrative personas, experimental moving-image aesthetics, and eye-tracking/physiological sensor–driven interactive installation, the research renders implicit editing processes visible in real time, exposing tensions between editorial agency and digital self-presentation. Contribution/Results: It proposes two interaction design principles—“selective memory” and “controllable visibility”—that critically interrogate established frameworks of authenticity, subjectivity, and performativity. Over a two-month public exhibition, the installation successfully prompted audience reflection on editorial labor, empirically validating the efficacy of real-time visualization strategies in fostering critical digital literacy.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

We present Gaze and Glow, an interactive installation that reveals the often-invisible efforts of social media editing. Through narrative personas, experimental videos, and sensor-based interactions, the installation explores how audience attention shapes users' editing practices and emotional experiences. Deployed in a two-month public exhibition, Gaze and Glow engaged viewers and elicited responses. Reflexive thematic analysis of audience feedback highlights how making editing visible prompts new reflections on authenticity, agency, and performativity. We discuss implications for designing interactive systems that support selective memory, user-controlled visibility, and critical engagement with everyday digital self-presentation.

Problem

• Explores how audience attention influences social media editing practices
• Investigates emotional experiences tied to digital self-presentation processes
• Examines authenticity and performativity in user-controlled content visibility

Innovation

• Interactive installation reveals social media editing efforts
• Uses narrative personas and sensor-based interactions
• Supports selective memory and user-controlled visibility