Selfie Citizenship

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Prologue

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Inject/ed: Self(ie) Determination

      • Raju Rage

      Pages 3-11

   3. Introduction: Whose Selfie Citizenship?

      • Adi Kuntsman

      Pages 13-18

3. Acts of Selfie Citizenship

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

      PDF

   2. Performing Citizenship: Freedom March Selfies by Pakistani Instagrammers

      • Fatima Aziz

      Pages 21-28

   3. V-Day Selfies in Beijing: Media Events and User Practices as Micro-Acts of Citizenship

      • Gabriele de Seta, Michelle Proksell

      Pages 29-37

   4. Selfies for/of Nepal: Acts of Global Citizenship and Bearing Witness

      • Catherine Hartung

      Pages 39-47

   5. Youth’s Civic Awareness Through Selfies: Fun Performances in the Logic of ‘Connective Actions’

      • Catherine Bouko

      Pages 49-58

   6. The People: The #Selfie’s Urform

      • Negar Mottahedeh

      Pages 59-62

4. The Selfie Genre and Its New Adaptations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 63-63

      PDF

   2. Performative Intimacies and Political Celebritisation

      • Mattias Ekman, Andreas Widholm

      Pages 65-74

   3. Vote for My Selfie: Politician Selfies as Charismatic Engagement

      • Crystal Abidin

      Pages 75-87

   4. Biometric Citizens: Adapting Our Selfies to Machine Vision

      • Jill Walker Rettberg

      Pages 89-96

   5. Dronie Citizenship?

      • Maximilian Jablonowski

      Pages 97-106

5. Selfies and the Politics of In/visibility

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107

      PDF

   2. Selfies, Self-Witnessing and the ‘Out-of-Place’ Digital Citizen

      • Mark Nunes

      Pages 109-117

   3. Visual Afterlife: Posthumous Camera Phone Practices

      • Larissa Hjorth, Jung Moon

      Pages 119-126

   4. Like a Stone in Your Stomach: Articulating the Unspeakable in Rape Victim-Survivors’ Activist Selfies

      • Debra Ferreday

      Pages 127-136

   5. Selfless Selfie Citizenship: Chupacabras Selfie Project

      • Silvia Rodriguez Vega

      Pages 137-147

This collection reflects on the emerging phenomenon of ‘selfie citizenship’, which capitalises on individual visibility and agency, at the time when citizenship itself is increasingly governed through biometrics and large-scale dataisation. Today we are witnessing a global rise of politicised selfies: photographs of individuals with handwritten notes or banners, various selfie memes and hashtag actions, spread on social media in actions of protest or social mobilistion. Contributions in this collection range from discussions of citizen engagement, to political campaigning, to selfies as forms of citizen witnessing, to selfies without a face. The chapters cover uses of selfies by activists, tourists and politicians, victims and survivors, adults and children, in a broad range of geopolitical locations –China, Germany, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, the UK and the US. Written by an international and interdisciplinary group of authors, from senior professors to junior scholars, artists, graduate students and activist, the book is aimed at students, researchers, and media practitioners.

• politics
• visual culture
• social media
• citizenship
• cultural and social studies
• Selfies
• selfie citizenship
• activism
• biometric governance
• digital technologies
• witnessing
• citizen engagement
• elections
• digital politics
• politics of visibility
• dataisation

• Manchester Metropolitan University , Manchester, United Kingdom

  Adi Kuntsman

Adi Kuntsman is Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, the author of Digital Militarism: Israel’s Occupation in the Social Media Age (with Rebecca L. Stein), and the co-editor of Queer Necropolitics (with Jin Haritaworn and Silvia Posocco, 2014) and Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technologica Change (with Athina Karatzogianni).

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