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Humans of The World 

 

Introduction

            One moment, or event, can change everything.  Globally, humans are connected by universal life events—both good and bad—that every person has most likely experienced.  Brandon Stanton, Creator of “Humans of New York” (HONY), has captivated and shared events in everyday lives in a digitized format for a global audience. Today’s digital age presents a new and unique ways to capture media events that must be examined in a new light.  Thus, I will be analyzing Stanton’s “Humans of New York” in various mediums, including Tumblr, Instagram, and his published novel, in order to create a new argument about events in everyday lives.  I will begin by providing context and background about the HONY.  Afterwards, I will explain the globalization of HONY and explain how it relies on universalization in order to connect with the audience.  Next, I analyze three of his photographs that each display a life event of loss.  Finally, I will discuss new media research, completed by Choi and Toma (2014), as it provides the framework through which Stanton’s work can be analyzed. Ultimately, Brandon Stanton utilizes new media to portray the stories of the subjects he photographs.  The artifacts (case studies) I have chosen showcase global subjects in order to demonstrate how life events of loss shared through new media bring people together through shared human understanding.

Background of Humans of New York

            Brandon Stanton did not set out to create the popular and sensationalized “Humans of New York” phenomenon.  In fact, Stanton began his career as a bond trader.  In 2010, Stanton purchased his first camera, which due to his extremely hectic work schedule, he only had time to use during the weekends.  Thus, when he lost his trading job, it only seemed right to pursue his true passion—photography (Stanton, 2013).  After much dismay from family members, Stanton began his photography tour through major American cities.  Stanton explains the start of his tour: “My first stop was Pittsburgh. I explored the city in the same way that I’d explored Chicago: I walked around aimlessly, got lost, and photographed everything” (Stanton, 2013).  Stanton repeated this process through the numerous cities he visited, before returning to what would become the start of his success—New York City.

              When reflecting back to his original intentions, Stanton explains, “I first envisioned HONY as a photographic census of New York City. I wanted to take ten thousand portraits and plot them on an interactive map of the city” (Stanton, 2013).   Sadly, Stanton experienced months with no success; his website traffic did not align with his goals.  However, this changed when Stanton “discovered the power of social media” (Stanton, 2013).  Thus, he started a Facebook page for “Humans of New York”, which led to the following of a half a million fans in just over a year (Stanton, 2013).  This growth was promising, but Stanton wanted to expand even further.  This expansion was possible due to Tumblr, the microblogging platform and social networking website.  Stanton highlights this when explaining that “Soon hundreds of thousands of people were following HONY on Tumblr, and I remain thankful for Tumblr’s role in my success” (Stanton, 2013).  Tumlr allowed for a mass audience, and also allowed him to showcase his work to global spectators.

            Social media was not the only reason for the boom in HONY’s success.  Stanton claims that “The last major evolution in HONY came when I began interviewing my subjects” (Stanton, 2013).  Instead of featuring a standalone photograph, Stanton began pairing photos with captions whenever possible.  These captions can range from a detailed story, or a simple quote that leaves the interpretation up to the readers.  This led to even more explosive growth, as fans flocked to his website: “The mix of photography and writing HONY to grow even faster” (Stanton, 2013).  This marked the evolution of a photography project to the creation of a progressing blog.  After around three years of work, Stanton published the book, The Humans of New York.  The book has been featured on the New York Times best-seller list for 21 weeks (Bromwich, 2014).  Today, the Humans of New York Instagram account has 2.2 million followers and counting (Instagram, 2014), as well as 11.2 million likes on the Facebook page (Facebook, 2014).  This audience is crucial to his success of portraying life events.  Katz and Dayan argue that having a large audience is a critical component of a media event (Katz, Dayan, 1992). Stanton’s success in both the digital and print world demonstrates how well his content was received by viewers.   

Humans of New York as a Global Exploration

            Stanton’s undeniable success in the United States lead to a new goal: “Fifty days. 10 countries. 25,000 miles” (Matthews, 2014).  These numbers explain Stanton’s United Nations sponsored tour, where his goal is “to document the human stories so often missing from global headlines” (Matthews, 2014).  The UN’s partnership with Stanton has the goal of raising awareness for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (Matthews, 2014).  There are eight goals, which include reducing poverty rates and terminating the spread of HIV/AIDS (UN, 2014).  Stanton’s participants will help serve this mission “by attaching human faces to the project's written objectives” (Storm, 2014). This paper will focus on case studies, or photographs, from both this world-tour and also his roots in New York City.  More specifically, I will be focusing on the human stories, or events, that are centered on the feeling of loss.  This capitalizes on Julia Sonnevends’ idea of universalization, where the story has the same meaning and impact across the universe (Sonnevend, 2014). Furthermore, she claims “Journalists engage in myth-making: they communicate simple and universal social meanings—like division, renewal, loss, and hope—that people can relate to regardless of cultural difference” (Sonnevend, 2014). Ultimately, the importance is essentially the same regardless of the geographic location.  Therefore, Stanton is able to convey life events featuring loss to a global audience.

Case Studies

            I have specifically and purposely chosen three photos from Stanton’s “Humans of New York” Tumblr (also featured on Instagram and Facebook), in order to examine them through the lens of a new media event.  The photos feature subjects from New York, Jerusalem and Kenya.  Moreover, I have purposely selected photographs that express a specific life event in which the subject experienced loss.  Through critical examination of both the photo and the comments from users, the importance of Choi and Toma’s social sharing can be seen.

            The first photo is a photograph taken in New York City.  The background of the picture is intentionally blurred to showcase the women’s face and expression.  Her facial expression seems to indicate deep reflection.  The caption explains that she has experienced a universal life event: death of a loved one.  Due to this event, the woman was able to change the way she lived her own life; she decided to live life in the moment, without being concerned about money.  However, the long-term affect of this is that she had to be concerned about money later in life.

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         Stanton shared this photo on his Facebook page, and it received 108,490 “likes” and over 3,000 “shares” and counting (Facebook, 2014).  Additionally, the photo received thousands of comments.  These comments demonstrate that viewers are connecting to this event, as well as other stories that HONY has shared.  Furthermore, users such as Betty (seen below) use this as a platform to share their own personal life events.  Betty explains that her mother discovered that she had cancer right after her retirement.  In her comment, Betty states, “ I know my later years may not be comforting—but they may not come at all” (Facebook, 2014).  This is an extremely sensitive and personal anecdote to share on a public platform, but the 968 likes that she received on this status indicate that others can relate to her—and the woman in the photo’s—feeling of loss.

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

           

           The next is a photo is of a woman from Jerusalem.  Stanton posted two photographs of her, which is uncommon as he usually only features one picture per person.  The first is a full-body photograph that shows the women reading a piece of paper.  The caption explains that she is a Holocaust survivor, but unfortunately her family did not survive: “I never learned the specifics of what happened to my family. I never wanted to” (Stanton, 2014).  The second photograph is a close up shot of the woman that portrays her outlook on life, regardless of the struggles she has faced. Ultimately, the woman has an incredibly optimistic view on life.  She further explains that she reflects ona blessing that her mother left her in Poland.

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           Similar to the photograph taken in New York City, these pictures received hundreds of thousands of likes on Facebook (Facebook, 2014). Further, the comments demonstrate how much this event resonated with others.  The comment shown below shows that this woman’s life event connects to others on a human level by transcending differences.  For example, Hiba explains in her comment that she is both Arab and Muslim, and is not necessarily an Israeli supporter.  Regardless, her message is still incredibly positive.  She further claims “in HONY where there is no difference between black, white, muslim, jewish, christian, gay, straight….it’s the human being before anything and I LOVE THIS” (Facebook, 2014).  Hiba 2,99 likes on this status, which suggests that people are others are in agreement.  Ultimately, opening up and sharing a personal life event like this globally through social media brings people together through shared human understanding.

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

            Lastly, I have chosen a photograph taken in Kenya on Stanton’s United Nations sponsored tour.  The photo showcases two women in what appears to be not the best of living conditions.  The caption beneath the picture is short, yet powerful.  The caption explains that the woman’s mother passed away when she was three years old.  While she does not remember very much about her, she is reflects on the words that her mother shared when she was sick in the hospital: “’Never let a man steal your life’” (Stanton, 2014).  Her mother sharing this wisdom is an event in itself, as it has clearly impacted and resonated with the woman much later in life.

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

           Again, this photo was highly acclaimed on Facebook with 269,826 ‘likes’. The comments express that this message is universal.  Nataly, a Facebook user, commented that her “parents say the same thing” (Facebook, 2014).  While it is unclear where Nataly is from, it is clear that the notion of living your own life for you and not a man, which the woman in the photo learned from an unfortunate life event, is a powerful and universal. This is further exemplified from Amine Bks comment, which reads “Well you just stole my heart and the heart of many other readers” (Facebook, 2014).  According to Amine’s Facebook profile, she is from Montreal, Quebec.  This further exemplifies that life events regarding loss are able to reach beyond geographical boundaries and connect people based on true human experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Sharing

            Choi and Toma’s research examined social sharing in regards to interpersonal media.  Social sharing is defined as “the act of discussing significant emotional events with others” (Choi, Toma, 2014).  Choin and Toma’s research on the topic of social sharing determined that it is a widespread means of communication.  Therefore, the researches suggest, “that social sharing may fulfill fundamental human needs related to emotional expression and social connectedness” (Choi, Toma, 2014).  Further, the research focuses on two areas of theoretical significance.  The first is the media selection, or how people choose media for social sharing, as a function of the type of emotional event experienced” (Choi, Toma, 2014).  The second is psychological effects, “or how sharing through various media impacts sharers’ emotional response to the triggering event” (Choi, Toma, 2014). 

            Choi and Toma’s research is prominent when examining the three case studies discussed previously.  The people that Stanton features on Humans of New York are participants in social sharing, as they are presenting important emotional events with a global audience.  Through critical analysis of the most ‘liked’ comments on these photos, it is clear that sharing these life events has created a strong sense of social connectedness. The comments also showcase the psychological effects, as many of the comments demonstrated the users strong emotional response. Sharing life events through a digitized medium adds a new aspect and areas of analysis for this life event that cannot be seen by using Dayan and Katz alone.

Conclusion

            Although New York and Jerusalem are over 5,000 miles apart, people are still connected through shared experience.  Brandon Stanton utilizes the power of social sharing in order to bring people from across the globe together.  Stanton’s photographs remind us that we, as people, all must face and overcome similar tragic life events.  In fact, Stanton expressed to the Guardian that he noticed that his subjects had an underlying commonality: “I think the similarities I’ve noticed are the aspirations of people. It seems that everywhere I go, people want the same things – security, education, family” (Matthews, 2104).   Humans not only want the same things, but are also brought together through events of loss.  While the media can be polarizing, I think that Stanton proved that it ultimately has the power to bring people together.

 

References

 

Bromwich, J. (2014, August 18). Humans of New York Goes Global. Retrieved December 7, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/arts/design/humans-of-new-york-goes-global.html?_r=0

 

Choi,M.,Toma, C.(2014) Social sharing through interpersonal media: Patterns and effects on emotional well-being, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 36, Pages 530-541, ISSN 0747-5632, http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563214002350

 

Humans of New York. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork

 

Humans of New York. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://www.humansofnewyork.com

 

Humansofny on Instagram. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://instagram.com/humansofny

 

Humans of New York. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork

 

Katz, E., Dayan, D. (1992). Media events: The live broadcasting of history. Cambridge, Harvard UP.

 

Matthews, C. (2014, October 17). 13 Of The Most Striking Images Captured On 'Humans Of New York' Photographer's World Tour. Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/hony-humans-new-york-world-tour-photos_n_5999028.html

 

Sonnevend, J.(2014). Global Iconic Events Communications 440. University of Michigan. Unpublished Manuscript.

 

Stanton, B. (2013). Humans of New York. St. Martin's Press.

 

Storm, C. (2014, August 27). 21 Stunning Portraits Of Humans Around The World. Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://www.businessinsider.com/humans-of-the-world-brandon-stanton-new-york-2014-8

 

United Nations Millennium Development Goals. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

 

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