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

TL;DR

Gaze and Glow is an interactive installation that makes social media editing processes visible, encouraging reflection on authenticity and user agency through sensor-based interactions and audience engagement.

Contribution

The paper introduces an innovative interactive exhibition that reveals social media editing efforts and explores their impact on user perceptions and digital self-presentation.

Findings

Audience engagement prompted reflections on authenticity and performativity.

Making editing visible influences perceptions of digital self-presentation.

Interactive design supports critical engagement with social media practices.

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.