Selfies - by Katrin Tiidenberg (Paperback)

About the Book

This book presents a rich and nuanced analysis of selfie culture. It shows how selfies gain their meanings, illustrates different selfie practices, explores how selfies make us feel and why they have the power to make us feel anything, and unpacks how selfie practices and selfie related norms have changed or might change in the future.

Book Synopsis

This book brings a rich and nuanced analysis of selfie culture. It shows how selfies gain their meanings, illustrates different selfie practices, explores how selfies make us feel and why they have the power to make us feel anything, and unpacks how selfie practices and selfie related norms have changed or might change in the future.
As humans, we have a long history of being drawn to images, of communicating visually, and being enchanted with (our own) faces. Every day we share hundreds of millions of photos on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Selfies are continually and passionately talked about. People take vast amounts of selfies, and generate more attention than most other social media content. But selfies are persistently attacked as being unworthy of all of this attention: they lack artistic merit; indicate a pathological fascination with one's self; or attribute to dangerously stupid behaviour.
This book explores the social, cultural and technological context surrounding selfies and their subsequent meaning.

Review Quotes

The author explores what selfies mean and do, why people love and hate them, and what it reveals about collective cultural values and social norms. She considers the different meanings of selfies within the wider context of social media, selfies as a practice of self-expression, why people take and like selfies, how selfies are neither the first nor the only technologically mediated practice with strong reactions by people, and how they are neither "good" nor "bad" and do not have a universal meaning. She discusses selfies in the context of history and technology by looking at previous versions of image making and information-sharing that are like selfies; how selfies have multiple functions and meanings; and how they make people feel and why they have the power to make people feel anything, addressing their related cultural stories and social norms and challenging the idea that they are narcissistic, inauthentic or low-quality photography, or empowering, showing how they are a part of feeling judged or in control. She ends with discussion of how the selfie has become a metaphor for various phenomena and practices, as well as its future.--Annotation (c)2018 "(protoview.com)"

This deceptively slim volume offers a deeper and more nuanced dive into its topic than many realize selfies deserve, revealing the form to be steeped in histories - of art, of photography, of technology - and contemporary attitudes toward gender, youth, and bodies. Remarkably clear, full of examples, and fun to read, this book is essential for anyone interested in popular culture.--Nancy Baym

About the Author

Katrin Tiidenberg, is an Associate Professor of Social Media and Visual Culture at the Baltic Film, Media, Arts and Communication School of Tallinn University, Estonia and a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the School of Communication and Culture in Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research focuses on visual culture and social media, she has published extensively on selfies and is interested on the methods and ethics of studying visual self-presentation and sexuality. She is the founding member of Estonian Young Academy of Sciences, second time board member of the Estonian Sociology Association, a long term member of the Association of Internet Researchers and its Ethics Committee and a member of the E-Read Cost Network.