Towards a theoretical understanding of the selfie: A descriptive review

Abstract

Over the past 2 decades or so, the triple digital revolutionsocial network, Internet, and mobile phone-has increased the use and popularity of the "selfie." Within social sciences, the phenomenon of the selfie has been examined as a new culture that shapes human self-presentation, social relationships, and social consumptions. This article provides an overview of the most common theoretical approaches that have been used by researchers to understand the phenomenon of the selfie. In particular, the article focuses on the use of the following frameworks: dramaturgic lens, sociosemiotic approach, and dialectical framework. In addition to these approaches, this article also introduces some preliminary ideas relating to the possibility of exploring the selfie through the lens of mediatization theory. This is based on the argument that the selfie phenomenon operates within media logic as it offers symbolic resources, discursive strategies, communicative messages, and performance tactics that shape and transform the presentation of self, social interaction, and social order.

Hey, let's take a selfie: insights of selfie defamiliarisation in the classroom

“…Whilst these innovations effectively overcame certain levels of fraud and ineffectiveness of the traditional system (Sunaryono et al, 2021), they were still prone to electronic deceptions and have been viewed as tedious (Tachmammedov et al, 2018). Nevertheless, selfies, smartphones, and their intertwined ubiquitin (Boursier and Manna, 2018) have the potential to create a sense of identity (Faimau, 2020) without the added cost, hardware, and technicality; hence an advantageous alternative as an attendance tool due to its authentic way it could be instrumentalised to identify the presence in class.…”

“…The analysis was guided based on three strategies (1) what is being shown (Eagar and Dann, 2016), (2) visual expression and sensorimotor coordination (Musil et al, 2017;Orekh et al, 2016) and (3) unique cues for selfies such us duckface and pressed lips (Qiu et al, 2015). In the initial stage, two researchers explored the selfies to identify characteristics that can be analysed, and concluded categorisation based on two aspects: (1) personality cues reflecting the indication of behaviours portrayed such as pressed lips, emotions, selfie trends, and the number of friends for the wefies (2) design cues reflecting editing behaviour such as manipulating layout frames (collages), text manipulation, captions (Barry et al, 2017), animation, icons (Faimau, 2020) and frames. The selfies were analysed based on context, such as what the author of the selfie portrayed, significant others in the selfie, actions, and the story depicted (Eagar and Dann, 2016).…”

“…Introduction Social media's rapid proliferation has fashioned the taking and sharing of selfies as ubiquitous (Grindstaff and Torres Valencia, 2021;McLean et al, 2019), where the word "selfie" has become renowned in the digital world (Faimau, 2020) as a novel social phenomenon (Soranzo and Bruno, 2020). Selfies are defined as self-portraits that visually communicate (Hess, 2015) and represent an individual's (Jackson, 2019;Qiu et al, 2015) thoughts, beliefs, and creativity (Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017), and it has arisen as a culture fixated with itself (Hess, 2015).…”

“…For that reason, the unprecedented role of selfies (McLean et al, 2019) has gradually garnered the attention of cognitive scientists (Soranzo and Bruno, 2020), as it is unclear how selfies could associate with such identity (Fox et al, 2021). However, most studies reflected on social media users focussing on the psychology and behaviour behind the selfie, such as selfie-taking habits, posting habits (Faimau, 2020), narcissism, self-esteem (Barry et al, 2017;Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017), openness, sociability, conscientiousness (Qiu et al, 2015), editing behaviour, sharing behaviour (Chae, 2017), motivation and intention (Bij de Vaate et al, 2018). Whilst being a widespread culture among the younger generation, we observed a scarcity of studies operationalizing selfies in the educational context.…”

السمات الشخصیة وعلاقتها بتقدیم طالبات الجامعة لذواتهن على مواقع التواصل الاجتماعی من خلال السیلفی

“…In contemporary society, social media use has become a widespread daily activity, especially among adolescents and youth who are often engaged in visual content and selfie sharing (Boursier, Gioia, and Griffiths 2020). Over the past 2 decades, the triple digital revolution-social network, Internet, and mobile phone-has increased the use and popularity of the "selfie" which is referred to by (Luppicini 2013) as 'technoself', and the phenomenon of the selfie has been examined as a new culture that shapes human self-presentation and social relationships (Faimau 2020).…”