Going Public? The selfie and digital photography

Michael James Walsh and Stephanie Alice Baker have published a new article in Information, Communication & Society. Drawing upon Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, this paper situates the phenomenon of the ‘selfie’ in light of increasing concerns about privacy.

The ‘selfie’ is a contemporary form of self-portraiture, representing a photographic image of the human face. Images of this kind are created for the purpose of reproduction and to communicate images visually with others from a distance. While the act of taking selfies – in terms of self-photography and self-portraiture – is not a new phenomenon, the ubiquity of mobile digital devices has facilitated the proliferation of digital self-portraiture. The selfie is part of the move towards ubiquitous digital photography in which technologies and practices of photography have begun to pervade all domains of contemporary society. The increasing influence of visual culture has been accompanied by a series of pressing public incidents: iCloud’s leak of celebrity photos, the rise of revenge porn and the sharing of non-consensual images of school children, all of which highlight the negative aspects of photography’s entanglement with digital technologies. These incidents raise important questions about the nature of the selfie as a potentially public or private form of photography in the digital age.

The authors contend that what is at stake in our contemporary media ecology is the individual’s relationship to privacy. Producers of photographs have become increasingly aware of the need to manage their self-presentation online. In the case of the selfie, some producers are highly conscious of privacy. Some selfies are made specifically with the intention of keeping private, while others are shared at a certain points in time. The variability around the production and consumption of selfies highlights a key component of privacy in the contemporary age; the extent to which it is interactionally contingent and achieved. Ironically, privacy has always been a collaborative or collective effort. The social nature of privacy is susceptible to violation or instances where, in the case of the selfie, unsanctioned consumption is possible. These issues become acute when considering the increased public dissemination of visual culture, where even the accidental and brief revealing of a private self can be globally disseminated.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1220969?journalCode=rics20