Personal Projects – Expressing Your Vision

Selfie Research 1.

24/10/17

A very rapid search of Google Scholar shows a plethora of articles about selfies over the last 10 years. They vary widely in approach and thoughts, from articles that are mainly about the presumed patho-psychology of the selfie taker to those that take a diametrically opposite stance, describing it as a healthy or understandable occupation. There is even at least one higher education level course exploring the whole concept, linked with various exercises, a Flickr page and much related discussion. (Selfieresearchers.com,2014)

One study by Sung of Korean young people found that there were four main reasons for posting selfies on social media ‘attention seeking, communication, archiving, and entertainment. Of particular interest to the psychological mechanism of selfies is the motivation of “attention seeking.” ……. Among the various means of publicly posting self-information on SNSs, such as personal profiles, status updates, and wall posts, selfies in particular emphasize key features of one’s self by displaying optimized, desirable self-image with the intention of seeking admiration from others. Given that selfies showcase one’s interests and values, positive reactions and feedback received from social connections on SNSs (e.g., “likes” or “shares”) may act as testaments to the close relationships and social validation central to one’s self-worth, that is, self-affirmation’ and also that there was a significant amount of narcissistic behaviour and that ‘Narcissists tend to post their selfies more frequently and show greater intention to post than their counterparts. Additionally, higher levels of narcissism were associated with stronger attention-seeking motivation in terms of selfie behaviour.’ (Sung et al., 2016). This study is clearly limited as it concentrates on one group of people without any ethnic diversity but does demonstrate the trend of academic research.

A further study by Dhir looked at age and gender so the most prolific selfie posters are adolescents, and the least likely are older adults. (Dhir et al., 2016) and yet another study by Baiocco showed differences in gender, with females and non-heterosexual people more likely to post than heterosexual males. (Baiocco et al.,2017).

These studies, while academically interesting, do not explain the current prevalence of selfie taking and posting. Most of the studies seem to imply a negative correlation between selfie posting and positive personality traits and suggest that it is the need for self-validation in the current era that explains it. This seems a somewhat unbalanced approach given that it is such a common part of youth and young adult culture, and it seems unlikely that all people in these age groups are strongly narcissistic!

In an interesting (and lengthy) study by Diefenbach and Christoforakos they point out that in spite of the preponderance of selfies on social media there is an overall critical attitude towards them, leading to a paradox – why, if no-one likes selfies are so many taken? Is it a ‘social obligation’ or do people actually enjoy it but not admit this? Are the present showy selfie poses mainly ironical, and does this drive the posting of ever more narcissistic poses? (Diefenbach and Christforakos, 2017).

References

Baiocco, R., Chirumbolo, A., Bianchi, D., Ioverno, S., Morelli, M. and Nappa, M. (2017). How HEXACO Personality Traits Predict Different Selfie Posting Behaviours Among Adolescents and Young Adults. Frontiers inPsychology, 7.

Dhir, A., Pallesen, S., Torsheim, T. and Andreassen, C. (2016). Do age and gender differences exist in selfie-related behaviours?. Computers in Human Behavior, [online] 63, pp.549-555. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.053 [Accessed 3 Sep. 2017].

Diefenbach, S. and Christoforakos, L. (2017). The Selfie Paradox: Nobody Seems to Like Them Yet Everyone Has Reasons to Take Them. An Exploration of Psychological Functions of Selfies in Self-Presentation. Frontiers in Psychology, [online] 08. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00007 [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Selfieresearchers.com. (2014). Introduction and Guidelines. [online] Available at: http://www.selfieresearchers.com/introduction-and-guidelines/ [Accessed 3 Sep. 2017].

Sung, Y., Lee, J., Kim, E. and Choi, S. (2016). Why we post selfies: Understanding motivations for posting pictures of oneself. Personality and Individual Differences, [online] 97, pp.260-265. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.032 [Accessed 3 Sep. 2017].

Selfie Images – Playing

24/10/17

This thread will be for the images that I have ‘played’ with. An experimental thread using images taken with my phone and altered using apps. I suspect many will be less than flattering! But, to some extent, that is the point.

First set – altered via Snapseed, with some additional wording. As expected – not aiming for the ‘beautiful’ look. These images give no idea of what I was doing or where I was. The expressions are blank – and look tired. Clearly need to work on my gaze and the ability to smile while on camera.

06/11/17

Image made with Photo Lab, an app ‘designed’ for alteration of selfies, on a camera or tablet – supposed to give fun and beautiful images. Not sure this is am improvement either. Clearly need to work on making myself look younger – not ancient! untitled-13

03/12/17

This time I’ve made the images with Procam 5. Is 2 better than 1, or maybe 2 x 1/2 is better? These are fun to play with – but haven’t found a ‘serious’ use yet.

and going very light

03/01/18

Playing with photoshop! Additional layer via fractalis, then distorted, then added in further layer of smart blur – leaving out into space – am I in a time warp? Selfie Jan

Monthly Selfie Images

This is a simple trail of the monthly images: realised it can’t always be on the first of the month if I am at work – so as near as possible

September 2017:

sEPT 17

October 2017: OCTOBER 17

November 17 Nov selfie

December 17

January 18

Selfies – Starting Point

24/10/17

I have been thinking more about the concept of selfies. Oddly enough, it is not a photographic genre I have experimented with. I am not sure why. Is it because:

I am very body conscious and don’t like anyone taking photographs of me
I am too old, and haven’t ‘got the hang of’ the social media explosion
Too lazy/too busy with other things
Not the right (or rather wrong) personality type

Any or all of the above probably apply. So I decided that it would be interesting to take a two-pronged approach to investigating them further.

Research about the academic theories of the use/abuse of selfies
Personal experimentation with the genre

This will be a long term project that I plan to revisit intermittently over the next year or more. It doesn’t fit directly into my studies for EYV, so will sit alongside it, although some of the research and practice may overlap.

I have set up 2 threads for this, one on research and one for images. I started taking the images in August, but have decided to concentrate on taking an image together with a photo of where I took the image on a monthly basis, for ease of remembering I have chosen the 1st of the month, around about lunchtime. I have also been playing with altering the images – initially using Snapseed on my phone, but also plan to play with them using other phone software, so will see where that leads.