Selected Papers of #AoIR2022:  

The 23rd Annual Conference of the  
Association of Internet Researchers 

Dublin, Ireland / 2-5 Nov 2022 
 
 

 

Suggested Citation (APA): Trillò, T., Hallinan, B., Green, A., Kim, B.,  Mizoroki, S., Scharlach, R., Frosh, 
P., & Shifman, L. (2022, November). “I Love This Photo! I Can Feel Their Hearts”. How Users Across the 
World Evaluate Social Media Portraiture. Paper presented at AoIR 2022: The 23rd Annual Conference of 
the Association of Internet Researchers. Dublin, Ireland: AoIR. Retrieved from http://spir.aoir.org. 

“I LOVE THIS PHOTO! I CAN FEEL THEIR HEARTS”. HOW USERS ACROSS THE 
WORLD EVALUATE SOCIAL MEDIA PORTRAITURE 
 
Tommaso Trillò 

Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Blake Hallinan 

Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Avishai Green 

Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Bumsoo Kim  
Department of Media & Communication, Pusan National University 
 
Saki Mizoroki 
Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Rebecca Scharlach 

Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Paul Frosh 

Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
Limor Shifman 

Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
 
 
Abstract 
 
Personal portraits on social media are value-laden constructs. Whether documenting 
graduation or flexing in the gym, users express what they care about and present it for 
others to evaluate. Since “global” portrait genres are produced and consumed in 
different locales, their interpretation and evaluation may vary. We thus ask: What values 
do people identify in different types of social media portraits? Which evaluative criteria 
do they use when judging them? An analysis of 100 interviews with users from 



 
Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States reveals that people 
consistently recognize genre-specific values in portraits and evaluate them through a 
narrow set of communication-related criteria. Such evaluations vary somewhat cross-
culturally in ways that only occasionally match established comparative literature on 
values. We reflect on the relational character of the criteria adopted for the evaluation of 
portraits worldwide, highlighting its association with new modes of sociability in digital 
spheres.