Participation in social media by people with visual impairments. On everyday relevance and biographical significance of sociodigital spaces of transaction

• Applicant: Dr. Alexander Geimer
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 537384361

Social media becoming a part of daily life has led to new degrees of freedom, new limitations, and new barriers in self-expression and online communication. Furthermore, there are paradoxes in participation that pose substantial risks and opportunities to individuals with disabilities. So far, this has been the subject of very little research. This is especially true for the effect that social media’s visual focus has on individuals with visual impairments. The proposed project is the first to research the impact of social media on the daily lives and the biographies of people with visual impairments. The Documentary Method is being used as a framework to reflect upon aspects of "Bildung" (habitus transformation) through participation in social media and the inhibition and decline of life chances due to the acceptance and appropriation of stereotypical normative addressations. The aims of this project can be summarized as follows: * Reconstruction of the significance of conjunctive spaces of experience and habitual orientations for the use of social media by individuals with visual impairments (visual disabilities and blindness) * Analysis of specific transactional spaces and their relevance for processes of "Bildung" (in the sense of the transformation of habitual orientations) and their impact on biographical developments * considering the materiality and visuality of practices of online communication and the normative-appellative character of self-representations and the circulation of (anti-) hegemonial subjective norms in online networks. The research matter will be studied through a qualitative cross-section encompassing the comparative analysis of biographical-narrative (trace-)interviews (focussing on online traces of the interviewees,), including phases of showing the use of the hardware, and analysis of selected products of their own (mainly text, pictures, memes, and videos) as well as their online environments. Moreover, this is linked to aspects of the development of qualitative methods to reconstruct sociodigital spaces of transaction – in addition to the sociopolitical aspects regarding (the fostering of) inclusion (in regard to social media) when considering the results of this study. Besides as of yet unknown social categories (like generation, time of onset of the visual impairment, gender, ethnicity, multiple impairments) that could be in the focus of research and analysis, the ability for visual orientation, educational background, and the professionality and intensity of use will be taken into account. The project is promising groundbreaking insights into how individuals with visual impairments interact with old and new technological, psychosocial, barriers, and normative attributions by analyzing the relevance of forms of participation in social media in daily life and the biographical context.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants