Youth and social media: the affordances and challenges of online graffiti practice

Social media and new forms of ‘getting up’ online (culture and practice)

The ability of graffiti writers to instantly post their work to a global audience has transformed the graffiti culture in many ways. As Quintero (2007) highlights, such activity is encouraged by some graffiti writers because graffiti practice is about garnering fame, being ‘up’ far and wide, and the Internet affords instant global reach. Graffiti in the online virtual space is still about ‘getting up’, ² but it has changed where and how a writer ‘gets up’, as James explains, citing the prolific Melbourne graffiti writer, Lush:

You know LUSH yeah? Well he has a good quote where he’s like, now instead of getting up ‘all city’ you want to like try and get up on the internet, ‘cause half the time you’re travelling through a city and you’re not looking at the walls, you look at your phone. So, it’s not about how much you get up in the physical world, it’s how much you post online and that sort of rings true. – James

While in this case ‘getting up’ constitutes posting on the Internet via social media channels such as Instagram, while the fundamental aspect of the practice is unchanged: writers continue to produce work in the physical world. The medium for display has shifted, however, transitioning the work from the physical/localised to the digital/globalised by altering circulation and viewing modes, thus in some ways creating a hybrid community (Etzioni and Etzioni, 1999). Lush has enthusiastically embraced social media, adding his Instagram account name, @lushsux, whenever he produces new work, but, while not all writers do this, a growing number of writers do so to promote their art practice (MacDowall and de Souza, 2018). See Figure 1 for an example of LUSH adding his Instagram account name to a completed piece.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

LUSH piece showing @LUSHSUX.

While the majority of participants in this study have Instagram accounts, they articulate a complex range of reasons for having them, reasons that sometimes seem at odds with traditional graffiti writing culture. Being prolific and ‘getting up’ regularly is now, in many ways, about branding or broadening one’s profile as a legitimate artist; thus, Instagram serves as the vehicle for market saturation of one’s tag or street brand. MacDowall (2018: 250) refers to the rise of a brand focus in graffiti as ‘the new digital economy of the Instagram Era’. This is an interesting point, as graffiti writers traditionally practised in the public domain, not necessarily for consumption by the general public but for peer recognition (Campos, 2013; van Loon, 2014). Pieces produced by graffiti writers are meant to broadcast their skill and technique to other members of the graffiti writing community in a closed network that is generally not produced for the benefit of the public; though visible, it is largely unintelligible to them. When asked about the distinction between graffiti and street art, Tyrone explains:

. . .like you are [street artists] trying to engage the people that we [graffiti writers] don’t care about, you know. [laughs] It’s like graffitis for graffiti artists’, it’s not for everyone. The public’s amazed, but it’s for us to see and our friends to see. – Tyronne

As James remarks, Internet technology and social media, Instagram in particular, have become useful tools for reaching a wider audience, such that writers leverage social media technologies to further their artistic careers:

There’s a lot of people since like, the Banksy film [Exit Through the Gift Shop] was probably one of those pinpoints where a lot of people jumped onto the street art and graffiti bandwagon and it seems like a lot of the people starting out from that point are seeing it more as a business model, and it seems like they really hone into social media to sell it and it can be a bit cringeworthy sometimes. – James

James cites the release of the Banksy film, ‘Exit through the Giftshop’, as a watershed moment for graffiti and street art. He notes that it precipitated a surge in interest in the various forms of street-based urban art with little connection to the street codes of graffiti writing. This shift away from traditional codes is reflected in individuals seeking to further their artistic careers through social media platforms, a somewhat disquieting endeavour for James, even cringe-inducing. This is interesting given that James is part of a new breed of writers who experiment with a range of mediums apart from spray-paint and markers, using stencils, stickers and brushes in their work, as he explains:

I haven’t seen that sort of crossover for a little while, like doing graffiti letters and also doing stencils as well. So I wanted to be like the one, who I know in my generation who’s doing that, I’m gonna try and like push that and try and come up with something new. Also doing some oil painting and still doing stuff with spray cans and drawing. – James

For James, branding is tinged with negative connotations as if it is somehow problematic to broadcast one’s work in a commercial manner, ironic given my research finding that a graffiti writer’s tag or street moniker is akin to a personal brand, intended to build a street reputation. This aligns with other scholars’ findings (see Campos, 2013; Carrington, 2009; van Loon, 2014). While the traditional, intended audience of writers is other writers, a new breed of urban artists now focus on the creation of a commercial ‘brand’ identity via their tag/logo (Moody, 2014). Therefore, it can be argued that a graffiti writers ‘tag’ is similar to a ‘cultural platform’, or what Carah and Angus (2018: 180) identify as ‘a brand [that] offers symbolic resources and builds social spaces that structure the participatory incorporation of brands into cultural life’. In this way, graffiti writers embrace digital communication channels to broaden external interest in their art practice which enables them to communicate their work to the broadest possible audience.

The significant rise in the use of Instagram suggests that, as writers mature in their ability, they seek to leverage their skill into a more ‘legitimate’ or mainstream art practice; in other words, they may seek to make the transition from graffiti writer to professional ‘artist’. Jack reflects on his own use of Instagram in the interview excerpt below, highlighting this somewhat contradictory position while illuminating aspects of James’ comments above regarding motivations for using social media:

I reckon the impact of the Internet on graffiti has been pretty big. I mean like Instagram and stuff like that, I got an Instagram account in like November 2013 after never having one ‘cause I kind of didn’t want . . . I didn’t like the idea that you get well-known from the photos you upload as opposed to getting well-known from going out and actually doing graffiti. But because I kind of want to move slightly more toward a professional art practice I thought it would be handy for a few more people to be aware of my work so I kind of bit the bullet and got one. – Jack

Jack’s comments align with James’ remarks above concerning the commodification of graffiti that happens when individuals use the Internet and social media as a sales medium or to further their art practice. Jack seems very conscious of the impact that social media is having on the practice of graffiti writing, challenging the unwritten rules of the practice in some ways. Jack is careful to excuse his own use of Instagram by claiming initial resistance to the idea. He was keen to stay true to the informal code of getting known by ‘getting up’, that is, putting in hard work every night to ensure ‘your’ name is out there and known ‘all city’, ³ rather than gaining recognition from garnering ‘likes’ online. The use of Instagram is a practice viewed as less significant or, as I would suggest is the case in the hyper-masculine culture of graffiti writing, viewed as somehow emasculating because it is perceived as a ‘soft option’, particularly if the pieces are only produced in safe and/or legal spots such as the writer’s backyard.

The inference I draw from Jack’s reflections is that a writer who only posts work online is not prepared to put in long hours of risky and dangerous work to develop their street reputation. Jack further corroborates the somewhat contradictory nature of social media use in articulating his desire to move to a ‘slightly more professional art practice’, which speaks to the co-construction of social identity and ones’ subsequent self representation via social media channels such as Instagram (Wynn and Katz, 1997). Jack decided to acquire an Instagram account to get his work out there and noticed by a wider critical audience, though an audience that was not exclusively other graffiti writers. One senses however that underlying Jack’s reflection is a feeling that he is somehow ‘selling out’ for having this view and for taking steps towards greater recognition as an artist by using Instagram.

The findings indicate that the graffiti ‘audience’ has grown exponentially with the rise of social media such that it is now a globally accessible culture, one that has adapted to new mediums for interacting and sharing of graffiti art, as James explains:

Yeah I have Instagram now. For a while I didn’t like it because I was just like I didn’t want it to be like a broad thing, I want it to be just like a closed circle, like for me and my friends to enjoy it, anyone else who sees my work [graffiti] doesn’t really matter. But then slowly I’ve gotten a bit more used to like putting stuff in the open for people to look at it. – James

James’ view indicates that graffiti writers continue to learn from each other and with each other through sharing their work and their opinions via Instagram, regardless of the medium shift. Rather than focussing solely on pieces generating an audience in a localised geographic location, a writer can now share their work with a geographically-dispersed global audience. This works to expand the community of practice into digitally-mediated spaces, allowing for the uptake and learning of the practice by a greater number of interested young people, and demonstrates graffiti writers’ capacity to adapt to new technologies and social media platforms.

Entry to online practice: accessibility and access to digital communities of practice

The graffiti writers interviewed in this study pointed to the impact of the Internet and social media on the induction of young people into the culture of graffiti writing through online community spaces. As explained by Doyle in his interview, the Internet, with its reach far beyond the confines of geographically co-located friendship and community groupings, now provides an avenue for introducing graffiti to would-be practitioners the world over. In this way, social media platforms serve to exponentially extend the reach of the culture’s graffiti pieces:

The Internet certainly changed the game; we didn’t have the Internet when we just started in ’99. The whole of Blender studios [a Melbourne street art and graffiti studio space], the first part didn’t have a website, no one had it, and now everything’s completely different. Like one of our artists will be doing something and then, you know, he won’t have even finished it and he’ll post it online and someone in Denmark will have liked it and then shared it. I mean it really changes the game. – Doyle

Doyle’s comments highlight how the Internet and social media platforms have ‘changed the game’ in relation to graffiti, especially in terms of broadcast reach. The significance of a writer’s piece having truly global reach is that it can connect with an audience that would otherwise be inaccessible, a phenomenon that also has implications for those on the receiving end, the global audience. This point aligns with MacDowall and de Souza’s (2018) argument that the global reach of social media platforms, such as Instagram allow for a local practice to extend its influence across the world. The Internet can thus provide inspiration and models for the developing work of a novice writer. This represents a significant shift away from the direct personal interaction between active participants in the culture and fringe-dwelling graffiti writers who are interested but not always active, such as social media ‘lurkers’ described by Nonnecke and Preece (2000) who have social media accounts, but who primarily observe and access information with out actively engaging with the platforms.

The transformation of the culture from one primarily involving face-to-face interaction in the physical world to one generated online means new mediated social bonds that expand the horizons for involvement in graffiti writing culture. There remain some old-school ⁴ writers, however, who feel that Internet-mediated technologies challenge the authenticity of graffiti writing, as Doyle illustrates with the following statement:

The Internet is just another part of it, yeah. Look the graffiti purists are gonna try and think that everything takes away from the authenticity of graffiti because they’re stuck in a time warp where they think everything should be a certain way like it was [back in the old days] when we had old blue train rattlers and Hitachi’s [older types of commuter trains]. And, you know, it’s good and well to keep to that sort of structure of the idea within that scene but, you know, it makes that scene extraordinarily conservative which is outrageous considering it’s graffiti, they’ve got so many rules and structures that they have to live by that if you break the rules you can get into a lot of trouble, you know, and these are kind of set up and they’re old and stupid. – Doyle

As Doyle explains, a form of ‘old-school’ conservatism regarding what is authentic within graffiti culture can serve to stifle innovation. In his view, embracing the digitally-mediated online space can act as a locus for expanding opportunities for the learning of and participation in graffiti culture, as well as for the production and presentation of graffiti pieces. Doyle’s view indicates that the Internet and social media create opportunities for greater accessibility to the culture of graffiti writing via digital communities of practice.

The findings illustrate a shift in mobility and subsequent access to graffiti pieces born out of a rise in the use and popularity of the Internet and social media. Traditionally, graffiti was a very localised phenomenon, confined to specific suburbs and neighbourhoods, constrained by the writer’s mobility and the ease of city access and navigation. The visual culture of graffiti was therefore accessible only to those who were willing to go out exploring and walking the train lines, laneways, and hidden liminal spaces of the city to seek it out. Walking the train line or doing ‘loops’ (riding the train to view graffiti pieces, travelling to the end of the line, then staying on the train to do the return journey) was a distinct learning and social activity for graffiti crews, generating camaraderie and opportunities for learning as they walked, ‘bombed’, ⁵ and critiqued other writers’ and crew’s pieces and throwies, sharing knowledge and stories as they did so, as Tyrone explains:

You’d walk the train lines and take photos and go down a line to do loops and view all the pieces along the line and watch. . . But I don’t know, now there seems to be less of a connection with all that and more of a connection with your phone telling you who’s painting. – Tyrone

This demonstrates the importance of mobility for writers who engage with their physical environment, while social media presents different dimensions of mobility. As Jack explains below, the rise of digital communication technology and social media has amplified the reach of graffiti such that it can now extend from the warehouse wall along the train line in suburban Melbourne to the digital screens of interested young people the world over.

But Instagram’s huge for graffiti now, like ninety percent of writers in Melbourne probably have it and post on it very regularly. So it’s changed graffiti because you don’t need to travel on the train anymore to go and see a piece and stuff like that. – Jack

The findings show that the Internet has increased the reach of local writers in Melbourne, making graffiti much more widely accessible to people, including writers, which aligns with the notion of the mobility afforded by the Internet and social media. As Jack observes, young writers and others interested in graffiti no longer have to do ‘loops’ of the various train lines to keep on top of which writer or pieces are new and fresh; they just check their Instagram feeds and follow various writers that way. During ‘loop’ missions, crew members discussed the relative merits of particular pieces, shared tips, offering their assessments of how various techniques were rendered. This can now be more efficiently achieved by following writers on Instagram and being instantly alerted to a new piece by a specific writer, or quickly scrolling through a vast number of images of pieces. The same evaluations can occur this way, facilitated through the use of social media that puts the graffiti pieces of the world at one’s fingertips. Rather than walking the train lines and laneways of Melbourne, one can walk these urban spaces virtually, from San Francisco to Barcelona or Moscow, or any other global location, via a digital device.

This newfound mobility is discussed by Jack who views Instagram as a means of enabling greater accessibility to the art practice that he loves. This is a positive outcome for him, as social media affords him the opportunity to connect with a wider audience for his work – both his critics and his fans. This is important as it supports the view that graffiti writing is a significant, learned social practice (Baird, 2018b), able to adapt to change in the way graffiti is broadcast, from wall/train to digital screen. We can thus conceive of graffiti writers as innovators seeking to broaden their audience and their learning potential.

With the growing use of social media such as Instagram and YouTube, a novice graffiti writer does not have to engage in hours of illegal writing all over the city in order to garner recognition and respect. Digital communication technologies have transformed the practice such that all a novice writer needs is a few walls and an Instagram account, making their work instantly accessible to the world. This supports the notion of graffiti as a learned practice (Baird, 2018b), made evident by the greater access to knowledge of graffiti writing and its practices afforded by wide use of the Internet and social media, as Mark explains:

Writers can now get instant fame. They just do fifteen pieces, then post the fifteen pieces on Instagram and hashtag them away and next thing you know they’ve got ten thousand likes. Social media has completely changed graffiti. It used to be, who’s got the most pieces on the train line and who does the most work. These days it’s just people flipping through their smart phone, like that’s it, even graffiti magazines are becoming more rare because people just like constant Instagram graffiti. – Mark

The interview data indicates that social media opens up new spaces of community for the graffiti writer. Emerging online are new forms of community that privilege communal/social interaction and learning by sharing and observing practices using digital communication technology and social networking platforms. Via the use of social media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, novice writers can discuss their actions and interactions, albeit in a geographically-dispersed, online environment that nevertheless possesses some of the hallmarks of a physical community. A graffiti crew comprises a number of like-minded individuals who possess a shared passion and interest in graffiti and who come together to learn and perfect the production of graffiti pieces. As argued in this paper, these features are all equally present in an online space.

Digital challenges: Internet-mediated learning and online communities of practice

While the internet and social media provide a range of affordances to graffiti writers, my findings demonstrate that they can equally challenge the traditional ways of learning graffiti, that is, by observation and practice within the physical community of a graffiti crew. While crews have been the traditional space in which graffiti skills are learned and passed on, this learning continues in many ways in the shift to online, mediated learning.

The impact of the Internet and digitally-mediated environments on how the practice of graffiti writing is learned is complex and dualistic. As Joe points out in the following quote, one must get a feel for writing via actual practice:

Graffiti is hard to do, but you have to be relaxed, you have to relax yourself, can control, you push very slightly [on the nib] you get a very thin line. There’s a lot more to graffiti than what your normal figure of society thinks about it, and you can’t learn that from YouTube. – Joe

In this way, Joe’s comment suggests that the Internet threatens forms of social/communal learning experienced by graffiti writers in the situated context of the graffiti crew; however, new modes of learning are emerging that see the experience of community within a physical crew environment simply transferred to virtual communities of practice via social media such as YouTube.

The findings suggest that learning graffiti writing techniques from YouTube or any other online medium challenges the authenticity of the culture, an authenticity achieved through learning by doing and, night after night, putting in the ‘hard yards’ painting the streets in the real world. Utilising online learning videos such as YouTube also has its limits; a writer cannot get a ‘feel’ for a technique critical to writing signature graffiti with a can of spray-paint from such sources, as JD highlights below:

I mean look, I think that, like I said I’m quite open to how dudes do things. I do see that when I’m meeting other writers there’s always the oh, you know, there’s this new trick and because dudes are doing this stuff on YouTube and saying ‘if you use this nozzle and you do it this way’ and it’s kind of like, yeah, why wouldn’t you, you know, especially if your new to it. But why do you need ‘that’ nozzle to do it. It’s like shit that we figure out anyway. – JD

JD presents a contradictory interpretation of learning through YouTube. On the one hand he points out the positives, especially if one is new to graffiti; on the other hand he says that ‘It’s like shit that we figure out anyway’, implying that these are techniques that ‘we’ learn from participating in the crew. JD is concerned with the potential loss of the mechanisms by which graffiti writers traditionally learn within the crew, that is, via participation and social interaction in a community of practice.

Websites dedicated to graffiti and other urban, street-based art have had a tremendous impact on knowledge development within the culture of graffiti writing. These online sources include images and video of graffiti pieces, stories, lore, techniques, graffiti demonstrations, and even ‘how to’ videos. Tyrone highlights some of the tensions and contradictions experienced as a result of the rise of such digital communication technologies:

I mean, Dean’s pretty cool. Dean Sunshine [owner and moderator of Melbourne graffiti website ‘Land of Sunshine’] is a nice guy and he - I think he just really enjoys art. Then, I don’t know - for me, graffiti is not about websites. But saying that, I’ve got an Instagram account. I mean, the most authentic thing is just doing graffiti. All those sites don’t really - they usually have legal stuff on there anyway, not your stuff, because people don’t really walk the train lines and take photos and stuff, or climb walls, or appreciate stuff that’s illegal. – Tyrone

Tyrone’s comments highlight an important aspect of the impact of Internet technology on graffiti writing: it enables wider circulation of writers’ work, enhancing the standing of individual writers whose work is viewed as worthy of posting on websites and Instagram. In this respect, social media platforms provide a way for novice writers to gain cultural knowledge, learn the history of graffiti writing and acquire a basic understanding of the rules governing the practice in the real world, rules such as what not to write on (churches, monuments and cars) and what can be overwritten (in the hierarchy of pieces, throwies and tags), replicating the custom of informal learning from others via participation and observation (Baird, 2018b). The importance of new technologies for learning the fundamental rules and cultural knowledge of graffiti writing is best exemplified in the following quote from Joe:

I learned by, um, I looked online, I got a book as well, a book which is based on all old school Melbourne graffiti [Kingsway (Cubrilo et al., 2009)]. I kind of read up a bit on that, kind of history on writers back like around the ‘80s and ‘90s and, yeah, just like I made sure I knew a bit about it before getting into graff. So yeah I gathered up a lot of information and, yeah, after that I kind of knew a little bit about it. – Joe

Interviewer: And why was it important to read up about it, to know about it?

Kind of like the more you know about old school stuff, like you don’t get seen as such a ‘toy’, like other writers would be like hey this dude knows a bit about old school stuff and all that. – Joe

Joe’s remarks illustrate the mechanisms of informal learning from others via observation and practice, facilitated by the Internet which also offers a means of learning the history and lineage of graffiti writing. At 15, Joe, the youngest participant in the study when interviewed, had been painting for only 2 years, but was very adept, developing a solid style and street reputation. Joe highlights the importance of having good cultural knowledge of the world of graffiti writing. For him this was made easy through convenient Internet access. His experience demonstrates that social media can be used to facilitate one’s graffiti practice, to broaden it, and to enable easier entry to practice for novice writers. Online forums can give them increased knowledge and skills development, widen friendship groups, and facilitate access to more experienced writers in the graffiti crew so that they are less likely to be seen as un-schooled ‘toys’. ⁶

Young people interacting with one another on social media platforms simply represents their engagement in a new type of community, mediated in a virtual space. This is important, showing that the concept of community remains central to graffiti writers. In some respects the advent of online graffiti sites, particularly YouTube that hosts a range of user-generated content (submitted by ‘produsers’: producers/users) covering every aspect of graffiti culture, has broadened the scope of graffiti practice and production, affording wider access to graffiti culture for a variety of young people globally, particularly for those in rural or isolated environments who would not otherwise encounter it. This was significant for James who grew up in rural Victoria, Australia, approximately 90 minutes’ drive from the state capital. James used the Internet to view graffiti practice, as no other means were readily available to him, as he explains:

I remember like at the start I couldn’t get a line sharp and I was really into the Ever-Fresh guys [a Melbourne graffiti crew] back then and I’d see online, like people like FIBS [prominent Melbourne writer] getting these really crisp lines, I was like ah I need to try and get that. – James

The Internet and digital technologies open up opportunities for involvement that can advance the learning of graffiti writing skills, as James suggests in the above quote, particularly for young writers who are geographically isolated. The Internet could also offer accessible spaces for involvement in graffiti by young women, people with disabilities, or the very young.

Young graffiti writers now learning the practice alone in an autodidactic manner following online videos and engaging with online graffiti forums has ramifications for how they learn, signifying a dramatic shift in the culture of graffiti. The Internet opens up new ways of entering into the graffiti community, new ways of learning other than by physical participation in a graffiti crew. Crews have been the traditional space in which graffiti skills are learnt and passed on, but there are now new ways for learning to occur in online, mediated formats where both learning and production thrive through observation, interaction and participation in online communities of practice.