The selfie and the transformation of the public–private distinction

The selfie is a contemporary form of self-portraiture, representing a photographic image of the human face. The selfie is created for the purpose of reproduction and to communicate images visually with others from a distance. The proliferation of web 2.0 technologies and mobile smart phones enables users to generate and disseminate images at an unprecedented scale. Coupled with the increasing popularity of social media platforms, these technologies allow the selfie to be distributed to a wide audience in close to real time. Drawing upon Erving Goffman’s approach to the study of face-to-face social interaction, this article presents a discussion of the production and consumption of the selfie. We draw upon Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, to explore how the ‘presentation of self’ occurs in the context of a selfie. Next, we consider how the selfie as a form of visual communication holds critical implications for mediated life online as individuals go about doing privacy. We conclude by reflecting on the role of the selfie and its impact on the boundaries between public and private domains in contemporary social life

'Good Morning Fitfam': Top posts, hashtags and gender display on Instagram

Social networking sites are important platforms for visual self-presentation online. This article investigates how content producers present their gender identities on the social networking site, Instagram. We draw upon and develop Goffman’s analytic framework to understand the self-presentation techniques and styles users employ online. Conducting a visual content analysis of clean eating–related top posts, we examine how users deploy clean eating hashtags and how the architecture of Instagram constrains and enables certain identities around shared lifestyles and commercial interests. Our findings reveal the symbolic significance of hashtags for group membership and the degree to which gender identities on Instagram are configured around platform interfaces

A kinematic analysis of speech sound production in children and adults

Along with perceptual and cognitive-linguistic factors, motor mechanisms are thought to influence the development of speech and language. In the present investigation, features of movement were examined across three developmental periods, in 4-year-old and 7-year-old children and adults. The goals were as follows: (1) to determine the nature of basic features (i.e., displacement, velocity, duration) and underlying patterns of movement and the variability of these features and patterns; (2) to determine how the production of specific consonants is reflected in movement features and patterns. Lower lip movement was recorded while speakers produced words containing labial phonetic contrasts (i.e., man, pan, ban, fan, and van). Findings could be divided into two major categories. First, children and adults were observed to produce qualitatively different features and patterns of movement. Young children produce smaller and slower movements than adults. The variability of movement diminishes across developmental periods. Also, the organization of movement changes. Four-year-old children produce more submovements than 7-year-olds. These submovements are unsystematic and disorganized. Seven-year-old children, on the other hand, produce very simple close-open sequences, with few submovements added. Adults, like 4-year-old children, include submovements in their sequences, but these are systematic and linked to phonetic context. Across age groups, both individual features and overall patterns of movement contribute to phonetic differentiation. Duration, displacement, and underlying patterning of movement all are significantly influenced by word context. Therefore, although properties of movement differ dramatically across age groups, no age effects are observed in degree of phonetic specificity

Disrupting the media frame at Greenham Common: a new chapter in the history of mediations?

Drawing on Martin-Barbero's insistence on analysing the media's complex processes of social `mediation' and Scannell's insistence on grasping the phenomenal complexity of the media frame and how people interact with it, it is argued that an important, relatively neglected, dimension of the disruptive power of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp (1981-) has been its challenge to the terms of the media frame, the `struggle for visibility' it represents. This struggle for visibility is examined in two stages - in relation to the early years of intense media coverage and in relation to the later years of media silence. In the concluding section, connections are opened up between Greenham Common and recent, more obviously `mediated' forms of protest action