1 Vernacular narratives of well-being and the practice of photo-a-day Andrew Cox, a.m.cox@sheffield.ac.uk Andrew is a senior lecturer at the Information School, University of Sheffield, https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/people/academic/andrew-cox * Corresponding author Liz Brewster, e.brewster@lancaster.ac.uk Liz is a Non-Clinical Senior Lecturer in Medical Education, Lancaster Medical School, Lancaster University, https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/health-and-medicine/about-us/people/elizabeth-brewster Abstract The impact of social media on psychological well-being is usually investigated through survey-based studies of the mass effects of its use. This paper offers an alternative perspective, by exploring individuals’ narratives of their own well-being, arising from interviews about one seemingly simple, mundane digital practice: photo-a-day. These stories showed how people saw that they could shape their own well-being gradually through the way that sharing a photo each day reconfigured routines, brought them to notice new things and connected to others in new ways. The effect was complex and largely unintended. This reflected their sophisticated understanding of well-being as an elusive, complex practical accomplishment. The paper reflects on how well-being can be understood as accomplished within social practices by the spreading of meaning. Keywords: digital photography, photo sharing, photo-a-day, well-being, practice theory Introduction The impact of social media on well-being and mental health has become an important topic in public debate, and as a result in research. The issue is usually framed as the overall effect on psychological well-being of using Social Networking Site (SNS) platforms such as Facebook and is often focussed particularly on the experiences of young people (for recent systematic reviews of this literature see Baker and Algorta; Keles et al.). It explores the ‘see-saw’ (Weinstein) between the benefits of SNS for social connection with the negative effects of social comparison, addiction and other types of problematic uses. Most of this literature adopts a quantitative approach to seek to measure