9. Selfies & Social media influencers (Abidin--emic & etic)

Welcome to Section 9. Your main reading this week is Abidin, "Aren't these..."

Recap

In the previous sections, we considered a digital take on political anthropology including activism and extremism. We discussed how social influencers play important roles in these fields. In particular, social media influencers have emerged as prominent figures. Taking this idea of social media influencers we now return to the theme of identity online.

Emic & Etic: Anthropological concepts

As we've designed this course to be accessible for non-Anthropology majors, we have been introducing and revising Anthropological concepts each week. In this section, the concepts we'll draw on are "emic" and "etic". So you need to read this blog on emic and etic first. 

Selfies

 Now let's move on to Selfies, the first of two main topics this week. 

Screengrab from Twitter. The image is a selfie featuring Ellen a talkshow celebrity (dressed in white). This
image represents "likely the most high-profile commercial selfie" of 2014 (Abidin 2016) 

  It's easy to judge selfies as vain, egocentric and narcissistic as in the Chainsmoker's song...

  .

..but there is a lot more going on around selfie culture.

Self Portraits 

If the definition of a selfie is 'taking a picture of yourself', then selfies have been around longer than the internet itself. In the Western tradition, there is a form known as the self-portrait. 

Was Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
(1523-1524) the first selfie? (Shipley 2015, 406)

We might start with the self-portrait, a popular mode of painting in the West in the modern period (1500-).

Woman taking a selfie with a box camera
 and a mirror circa 1900 

Photography of course allowed for a new form of portriature. Instead of artists applying paint to canvas, now people could point a camera towards themselves and allow reflected light to  form an image on film stored within the camera. However, there were many barriers to analog photography. Even 100 years after the invention of this technology, analog cameras and film were expensive. It took time to learn how to use them, film rolls limited the number of pictures one could take, and developing the photos costs additional money. Early digital cameras, while not as detailed or vibrant as analog photography, allowed for the storage of hundreds, even thousands of pictures and (revolutionary for the time) enabled you to see and then choose to keep or delete a photo as soon as it was taken. But it was the inclusion of digital cameras in smartphones that brought the selfie to prominence. The massive increase in the availability and usability of cameras – breaking down previous barriers to entry – coincided with an upswing in selfie-taking, posting and sharing in online spaces. Building on our discussion of polymedia, when cost is removed as a barrier to use, the social meaning of media becomes more significant. The selfie has emerged recently emerged as a distinct category of contemporary digital media.

Selfie definition

So how are we to define a "selfie"? Shipley defines selfie holding "the cameraphone at arm's length, preferably at an elevated angle" (Shipley 2018) and taking a photo of yourself. But as he notes selfies are much than this. Abidien cites the Oxford definition: Oxford Dictionaries define selfies as “[a] photograph that one has taken of oneself, taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website” (“Selfie,” 2015).

Selfies have also morphed into:

• "belfies"--butt selfies
• "us-fies" and "we-fies"--group selfies (Shipley 2015, 407)
• "ironic selfies" (Shipley 2015, 407)
• photos taken by other people which are stylized in the selfie genre (Shipley 2015, 405)

Group selfie taken at a Holi celebration, 2014 

Selfies in Trinidad (Jolynna Sinanan)

Are selfies always narcissistic? As you might expect anthropologists apply methodological relativism, meaning we don't judge things as good or bad. As you might also expect, anthropologists apply holism; trying to understand a phenomenon (e.g. selfies) in a cultural and social context. If you expected this you'd be right.

Sinanan's  "When taking selfies in Trinidad" demonstrates that a culturally distinct idea of personhood emerges in social media posts by young Trinidadian women. Based on her 'ethnographic' observations living in Trinidad for 15 months, Sinanan writes:

Instead of believing that the truth of a person lies within and what we see on the outside is superficial, Trinidadians value what you see on the surface. What is styled, crafted and created is the truth of a person – inside is where secrets and lies are buried. Identity then is something that is cultivated and judged by appearance on each and every occasion. “What you see is what you get” is the goal of crafting appearance.

(It's almost as if your true self is on the outside and what lies within is false. This runs in contradiction to a typically Western idea of self, whereby the self is something and hidden within that you 'have to get in touch with'. This an emic idea of self. So anthropologists don't necessarily believe in a true self. You can imagine that changes what a selfie would be. This is an element of holism. Put another way, In Trinidad,  your true self is the one you portray to the outside world. In European/Western cultures, often the idea is that the true self is the inner self. Who you are when no one is looking is your real self.).

In line with the Anthropological principle of comparison, Sinanan contrasts selfies in Australia...

a quick look at my Australian friends’ social media profiles – shows that selfies are only posted by a “type” of person, not personality-wise but looks-wise: young, attractive, feminine, model-thin or glamour model-curvy, the types of women whose images dominate our media.

Jolynna Sinanan selfie (during fieldwork in Trinidad?)

...with Trinidad:

– women of all ages, shapes, class and ethnic backgrounds post selfies, front-on, from the side and showing clothes and styles... Their motivation for posting selfies is “because I felt like it”, “I was in a good mood”, “I liked what I was wearing” or “my make-up looked good”. All these reasons remind me that you don’t need to be a celebrity, a well-timed selfie can help you just celebrate yourself.

So Sinanan has gone way past the idea the selfies are narcissistic etc. Furthermore, Sinanan suggests:

 "There’s a kind of social exchange – notoriety and fame are accrued through likes and comment". (The exchange here is in likes; you liked my selfie, so I'll like yours). This is reminiscent of Dalsgaard's argument, which we encountered in the section: Online Self/Selves: Netizen & (In)Dividual about politicians and normal people trying to get 'likes'.

In particular, this comes through in her scholarly research. See Sinanan's "Choose Yourself"

 In other words, it's not simply that selfies and social media are used differently by young women in Trinidad. You need to understand Trinidad's culture and society before you can understand these young women's posts. Of course, much more can be said about selfies and social media, so let's look at some different approaches.

Selfie love

Visual anthropologists study how the popular culture of selfies affects how people around the world react to cameras, reshape the protocols and contexts for image taking, and, by extension, reimagine themselves as part of dispersed urban and transnational publics. Shipley, for example, contends that the selfie, rather than a singular form of technologically driven self‐portraiture, is a multimedia genre of autobiography or memoir that makes the image-maker into the protagonist of stories of his or her own composition. People now assume that anything, at any time, could potentially be posted and circulated online. Anything might be considered photogenic. This shapes how people experience both public social situations and intimate moments. These technologies and techniques are not only part of life in Western metropoles, but aspiring youth in rapidly growing Global South urban centers. Youth living in her fieldwork sites of Lagos, Nigeria; Guangzhou, China; and Sao Paulo, Brazil are at the forefront of selfie culture. Shipley's findings show that for youth in the Global South, owning a mobile device and connecting via social media is more important than things like having a stable place to live. However, the significance of selfies and selfie cultures varies depending on context

Children taking a selfie at school, 2018

Shipley on Selfies

In the following section, we summarize Shipley's essay on selfies: 

Selfies promote debate on sex, race, and violence.  For instance, in her 2014 exhibition,  artist Kara Walker incorporated selfies as part of the artwork. Visitors to the installation were invited to "share pictures on social media". Nevertheless, when "white folks" took selfies around the sculptures "Controversies immediately sprung up online--particularly around white folks taking selfies in front of these figurative sculptures depicting laboring and sexually vulnerable black bodies" (Shipley 2015, 403). In this way, the selfies "incited a conversation about the history of raced, gendered, sexed violence". 

 [Artist Kara Walker in front of her?] Sugar Sphinx sculpture  (photo by New Yorker)

Selfies also are engines of celebrity culture. We can see this in relation to African, and specifically Ghanian, celebrity cultures. Ghanian hip-hop artists, Reggie Rockstone and VIP produced remixes of the Chainsmokers' Selfie track:

In this and another track "Selfie Remix", we get a sense:

• of the "pleasures of self conscious reflection through image taking" (403)
• of the "selfie as sexual foreplay" (403)
• that "holding on to a momentary experience is more significant than the experience in and of itself" (403-404).

Rockstone "encouraged fans to tweet selfies to him, curating and reposting the most original and sexiest to his 170,000 followers." So while the original Chainsmokers track condemned the practice ("go fuck your selfie!"), Rockstone used selfies to drive his celebrity status. 

These two examples demonstrate the diverse uses and locations of selfie culture. This has created selfieness is:

•  a new way of being which changes how people imagine themselves (404)
• about the process of capturing and circulating the idea of self-production (405)

Selfies: Conclusion

In conclusion, the research on selfies indicates that these images are more than vainglory. They are instrumental in a changing culture in which we experience ourselves and our lives differently.

Subversive Frivolity: Abidin on Social Media influencers

Social media influencers represent a new form of celebrity. Whether brand endorsers or extremist online preachers, their influence and fame can far outstrip that of ordinary film stars. How are we to understand this new popular culture phenomenon?

Abidin on influencers 

Digital anthropologist Abidin does fieldwork in Singapore, Australia, and Sweden. She researches how selfies have become marketable to youth who may aspire to become 'influencers'. These social media influencers emerged as (semi-)professional selfie-producers who take selfies as a purposively commercial, thoughtful, and subversive endeavor. In this blog post (via the Selfie Research Network), Abidin outlines the most common types of selfies posted by these influencers. She argues that influencers’ engagements with selfies on Instagram shape selfies into sellable objects, as a form of tacit labor, and as an expression of contrived authenticity and reflexivity. Abidin uses the term “subversive frivolity”:

As selfie-takers, female Influencers have been renarrativizing the moral panic surrounding selfies to such a successful extent that good selfies and selfie-taking skills are a prized asset in the Influencer industry...If being consistently under-visibilized and under-estimated allows for the generative power of selfies to subvert the affordances of Instagram, the expectations of female entrepreneurs, the gaze of the camera, and representations of authenticity, selfies, and their subversive frivolity may continue to thrive under the radar.

"Subversive" means that they are fighting aginst the power structures (specifically gender power structures). "Frivolity" means that they do this subversion by having fun. In other words, they are not explicitly talking about 'fighting the powers that be', but they are actually being politically active. 

Here she talks more about social media influencers:

In a nutshell, Abidin argues that influencers' use of selfies is not frivolous but rather subversive (that means that selfies challenge the power norms in a society).

In later work, Abidin shows how social media can become more explicitly political. Abidin was also interviewed on ABC about the use of the online platform TikTok by the 'young activists' involved in organizing the 2019 climate change strike. Abidin posted this on her public Facebook page:

This ties in with themes of digital citizenship and activism on the internet, which we covered earlier.. In other words, if someone said that selfies were just vain and narcissistic they would be overlooking the political potential of selfies (and the influencers who use them).

Conclusion

Summary

Anthropological methods and knowledge can be used to unravel online practices; how we express ourselves, communicate, and create an identity online. Within this, we have focused on two particular phenomena here: selfies and 'Influencers' who use social media to make a living.

Main point

The main point here is that from an outsider's perspective, social media influencers and their selfies may appear as narcissistic. But from an emic perspective, these can reflect an entirely different, and deeply cultural, sense of self (Sinanan) or be subversive (Abidin)

 Further research: 

Digital technologies are thus allowing new forms of vocation. This is especially apparent for young people, the 'digital natives', who follow or indeed become social media influencers. So, in the following section, we will consider work.

Main Readings

Abidin, C (2016) '“Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity', Social Media + Society, April-June: 1–17 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305116641342

Sinanan, Choose Yourself.

Shipley, Jesse (2015) Selfie love: public lives in an era of celebrity pleasure, violence, and social media, American anthropologist, vol. 117, no. 2, pp.403-413

In Indonesia, selfie sticks are called "tongsis" which
roughly means "narcissistic stick"!

Additional resources

• See Sinanan's book: Miller and Sinanan Visualising Facebook 2017 
• Check out the Selfie Research Network 

• Hart, M. (2017) ‘Being naked on the internet: young people’s selfies as intimate edgework’, Journal of Youth Studies 20(3): 301-315. 
• Zexu Guan, "Chinese beauty bloggers" Here is my summary of this article.