Selfies: Why We Love (and Hate) Them

Katrin Tiidenberg

Apr 2018 · Emerald Group Publishing

About this ebook

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.

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.