selfie culture

Is the "selfie" a random offshoot of the digital revolution or a powerful tool through which we structure our individual and cultural identities? This paper explores the history, politics, and social consequences of the selfie and the culture that has risen around it in the context of the social networking revolution and digital identity.

Cultural Studies have always concerned themselves with the contemporary—the practices and habits that define or represent the culture of today. One such “ongoing” cultural practice is the Selfie that has become the buzzword in the present-day media and social network sites. Thus we have the ‘celebrity selfie’, ‘dangerous selfie’, ‘feminist selfie’, ‘group selfie’, ‘friendship-day selfie’ etc. The term has also crept into the Oxford Dictionary, which defines it as, “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media”. What is the impulse behind the selfie? Is it an extension of the genre of self portraiture, or is it the common man’s resistance against the objectification of and by the state agency? Is it a love of self-exhibition, a desire for agency, or a protest against hegemony? The present paper is an attempt to answer these questions by tracing the evolution of the selfies, how the selfie culture is promoted and disseminated by technology, how the feminists, capitalists and socialists perceive the rising of the selfie culture, the hazards of an obsession with selfies and the future of the selfie culture. Such an analysis, I believe, would throw light on one of the most popular sub-cultures of the world today, namely, the Selfie Culture.

With the worldwide proliferation of mobile phones, Oxford University Press defines 'selfie', as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, usually with a smartphone or webcam". The 'selfie' has evolved into a ritualistic and routinized practice. While there are studies that report the positive impacts of selfie-taking and selfie-viewing, a large number of studies (Iqani and Schroeder 2016, Chua and Chang 2016) have highlighted that there are increasing concerns on the harmful implications of the selfie. Hence, in this paper, we shall explore the selfie phenomenon through the lens of cultural theorists Adorno and Horkheimer, Althusser, De Beauvoir and Foucault, to discover if the selfie is truly a tool of empowerment as some perpetuate it to be, or it is another strategy for the social elites to remain in power.

Since the introduction of the mobile phone technology, at the end of the last century, digital photography as a medium has changed rapidly, especially regarding the image distribution. With a new stage of Web2 interface development in social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al these changes become more profound, especially regarding unpredictability of the distribution. Basing a differentiation on historic layers of pre-modern, modern and postmodern relationship to self, being conditioned and framed with technology, I will try to analyze a shift occurring in visual self-perception, analyzing changes of visual paradigms, since pre-modern times. These technologies are; camera obscura, photocamera, compact camera and mobile phone camera. Contrary to the times of camera obscura in which a subject was defining the space, or the subjectivised space of photo technologies, in selfie enabled technologies, subject and the object appear and at the same time; are – the same.

Trends in Psychology, 2020

In the present scenario, no event whether formal or informal is complete without clicking a selfie. Selfies are especially in trend among young people, and they go can go to any extent often risking their lives for a perfect selfie. The hype is so much that even the mobile companies advertise their new handsets on the basis of selfie camera. Previous empirical studies found that typical selfie sufferers were those who intend to seek attention and habitually low in self-confidence, and they believe that posting their images on social media platforms enhances their social standing. The present study is based in India, the country with the highest number of young population. Recently, the country reported numerous incidents, where selfie clicking has turned out to be in serious suffering. People also feel uncomfortable if they do not receive appreciation and likes on social media after posting selfies. Data were collected on the population age ranging from 12 to 30 years. The present study has uncovered the behavioral attributes of people who are more prone to taking selfies. The findings suggest that social exhibition and extraversion traits of an individual have a significant impact on the individual's selfie posting behavior.

Towards a sociology of selfies: The Filtered Face, 2023

This book examines selfies as a relational and processual networked social practice, performed between people within digital contexts and that involve online/ offline intersections and tensions. It offers an analysis of selfies through a rich and interdisciplinary framework that explores the ritualized and affective engagements selfies provoke from others. Given that selfies by definition are shared and posted through networked platforms, they complicate notions of traditional photographic selfportraiture. As such, this book explores how selfies invoke broader, stratified patterns of looking that are occluded in discourses of "empowerment" and "visibility," as well as the subjectivities these networked practices work to produce. Drawing on extensive qualitative research conducted over a period of three years, this book questions not only what selfies are but what they do, the worlds they create, the imaginaries that organize them, and the flows of desire, affect, and normativity that underpin them, questions that can only be addressed through research that closely attends to the experience of selfie-takers. It will be of interest to those working in the fields of Sociology, Cultural studies, Communications, Visual studies, Social Media studies, Feminist research, and Affect Theory.

Vista. Visual communication journal, 2019

The selfie generation is a term commonly used to describe people born after 1981 because of the supposed proliferation of selfies they take daily. If Selfies indeed define a generation of people, then they require close consideration as an evolution of social interaction. This interdisciplinary study focuses on photography as performance of looking involving social relationships between people. I ask How might selfies suggest a transformation of everyday social relationships? The selfie as active photographic performance is first examined through illustrative ethnographic observation. Then as performative photographic object the selfie is examined as interactive (Kress and Van Leeuwen's, 2006; 2009) visual communication. Finally, the performative spaces of the selfie in process(from initial performance, to object and as it is shared and moves between private and public spaces) is examined as relationships of proxemic perception(Hall, 1966).For the selfie generation the private spaces in social relationships has perhaps evolved not simply because of changes in photographic technology, but also new spaces of socialising where private and public contexts are often blurred and unfixed. Paper is open access here; http://vista.sopcom.pt/edicao/300

Frontiers in psychology, 2018

The Selfie Culture," practiced globally, is gaining popularity with each passing day. Owing to its ubiquitous fame across the globe, it becomes essential to inquire the grounds for such worldwide recognition. In few years, it also became the center of attraction among researchers and previous studies had recognized two important aspects of selfie: first, why is selfie posting on social media is increasing day by day and second, who choose to involve more frequently in selfie posting behavior on social media? However, these studies focused only on its online popularity on various social media platforms but did not pay much attention on its offline popularity among selfie takers. In addition to this, the multifaceted sides of selfie which may make it different from other pictures and might also play an important role in its popularity in both offline and online platforms remained unexplored. The present study addressed this gap and explored two important aspects of selfie related behavior, First, it emphasized the significance of understanding the user's conception of selfie and second, it explored the determining factors behind both offline (taking) and online (posting) modes of the practice. 60 college going students (44 females and 16 males) living in Delhi, India participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and qualitative thematic analysis was used to cull out the themes. The results showed five factors (looks good, keeping memories, mood driven, mirroring the self and posting on social media) behind selfie offline (taking) involvement. Further, the online (posting) selfie popularity had been driven by three factors (social approval, being the best among the rest, to maintain online presence). Participants' popularity of selfie usage in both offline and online modes advocates the need to explore the offline selfie involvement of selfie takers in future research. The study also extended the existing conceptualization of selfie phenomenon which could help to unravel its wide popularity among its users.

2019

Nowadays, the power of the image has a huge impact on how we define ourselves in the wider society in which we live. The advent of technologically advanced devices along with applications easily downloadable in smartphones, tablets or desktops have created a whole new level of opportunities for self-presentation. This paper focuses on exploring the phenomenon of selfie-taking as a form of expression in the digital era. It looks into its current and potential dimensions and attempts to sketch its implications on the person as an individual and social being. This tendency is also examined in order to explore its relation with the mental, psychological and physical state of the individual.

Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace

With the rise of digital technologies, selfies are a contemporary and popular form of digitally produced self-expression for Saudi women. Informed by Goffman’s (1959) self-presentation theory and Hall’s (1966) proxemics theory, this study explores the process of producing and posting selfies on Instagram and Snapchat platforms, and examines how these practices are shaped by cultural norms and platform affordances. Methodologically, an ethnographic approach was employed to observe selfie practices involving: focus groups, face-to-face interviews, online observation, and photo-elicitation interviews. The sample consisted of 35 Saudi women between 18-57 years old. The results were used to develop a framework for understanding selfie production consisting of six processes: the motivation process, pre-photo process, platform affordances process, audience customization process, assessment of cultural norms process, and the process of reposting selfie. Also, the study identified a number o...