▶ BCM310 Emerging Issues in Media & Communication
Self-taken photographs, taking photos of oneself — or the most common way of calling it ‘selfies‘. The word was marked the word of the year in 2013 by Oxford Dictionaries (Backer, 2016) with the definition of ‘a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website,’ even marking the term’s origin as Australian since one of the first uses of the word was on a public forum in September 2002 where a photograph of a drunken Australian man with a torn lip was seeking for advice about stitches that he just received. It was later analysed by numerous linguists that Australians have a tendency to shorten their words and end them with (ie); like how barbeque turns into barbie and breakfast turns into brekkie.
According to Senft, T. M., & Baym, N. K. (2015), a selfie is a photographic object that triggers the interaction of human feelings in the form of a two way relationship, (i.e. photographer and photographed, viewer and viewed). It can also be seen as a gesture or a practice, since most purposes of selfies are either to be posted on social media or to be sent to viewers; either way there is almost always an audience — albeit individuals, groups or large communities. Although, the term ‘selfie’ wasn’t around for a long time — the idea of the word was, instead they were named self-portraits. A lot of self-portraits were created long before technology is the way it is today, many famous artists such as: Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali and Lucian Freud have all painted or drawn self-portraits. In my opinion there was a lot more care and meaning with the ‘selfies’ of that decade as compared with the selfies in this day in age.
Image taken from garterlane.ie 
Image taken from dalipaintings.com 
Image taken from en.wikipedia.org
Apart from these paintings, the first actual ‘selfie’ that was ever taken was by a man named Robert Cornelius. A photography enthusiast and amateur chemist in 1839 decided to set up his camera in the back of his family store in Philadelphia where he removed the lens cap and ran into the frame of the camera where he sat for a minute then covering the lens again (Library of Congress, n.d.). He named it ‘The first light picture ever taken. 1839’.
Ever since technology has improved over the years, so has selfies. From self-drawn/painted self-portraits to just the click of a button and with improvement and changes over the years comes multiple different trends.
One of them being dangerous selfies. A study in 2018 has revealed that over 250 people have died from just taking selfies alone in the prior six years (Bansal, Garg, Pakhare, & Gupta, 2018), drowning being the number one reason because of failure to take the selfie, second being death from oncoming trains and other deaths include height, exposure to wild animals, firearms etc (Lishivha, 2018).
Trends like these have a tendency to become popularised because people today look for a sense of validity and acceptance into today’s society, the idea of selfies or self-portraits have been given a new face. You can either have the most iconic selfie of the year, the most creative or the most daring — people in this society always seek for something new and original, as if everyone who takes a selfie or selfies has a certain ‘like’ counter or rating and if you reach a certain high or certain low on your selfie, you’re put on a virtual scale where others can accept and appreciate you or deny and dislike you just based of a single photograph of yourself.
Image taken from cbsnews.com 
Image taken from usatoday.com 
Image taken from imgur.com
References:
- Backer, E. (2016, September 17). History Of The Selfie: A Photo Phenomenon. Retrieved from https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/articles/history-of-the-selfie-a-photo-phenomenon/
- Bansal, A., Garg, C., Pakhare, A., & Gupta, S. (2018). Selfies: A boon or bane? Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6131996/
- Library of Congress. (n.d.). Robert Cornelius’ Self-Portrait: The First Ever “Selfie” (1839). Retrieved from https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/robert-cornelius-self-portrait-the-first-ever-selfie-1839
- Lishivha, W. (2018, October 4). 10 of the world’s most dangerous selfies. Retrieved from https://www.getaway.co.za/adventures/worlds-dangerous-selfies/
- Senft, T. M., & Baym, N. K. (2015). What Does the Selfie Say? Investigating a Global Phenomenon. International Journal of Communication, (9), 1588-1606.
Jessica Pauline Camille Ablog Mercado 