Selfiecity was created in 2014 as a collaborative effort to investigate the style and various methods of the self-portrait commonly known as the “selfie”. Sefliecity studies the art of the selfie by comparing randomly selected photos on Instagram from five different cities.

 

Project Description

Selfiecity was founded and directed by Dr. Lev Manovich from the Graduate Center, City Center University of New York. Dr. Manovich is highly proficient in analyzing visual social data. With his expertise and the rise of the “selfie” in early 2014, Dr. Lev Manovich and his collaborators kickstarted the Selfiecity project.

The main focus of the project is to reveal patterns from the randomly selected Instagram photos from Bangkok, Berlin, Moscow, New York, and Sao Paulo. Imageplots are used to compile the seflies from each city in order to determine any correlation in age, gender and head tilt. The project serves as a tool for users to experiment the various findings of these randomly selected selfies through the use of  the Selfiexploratory page.

Findings

Selfiecity’s research is extensive with the use of a dataset that analyzed the selfies with both automatic image analysis and human judgement. The project uses the analysis from the dataset to present all of their findings and allow others to find potential new findings.

Through their research, the Selfiecity team found that more women engage in the art of the self-portrait than men. They also discovered that the selfie is more popular amongst younger generations. Their studies allowed them to observe which cities have “happier” people based on which city had more selfies of people smiling (i.e. the people of Bangkok smile more than those from Moscow). The various findings and exploratory options of this project are for the interest of those who wish to explore social media body language and visual social media within the Digital Humanities.

 

Project Significance

Selfiecity holds a large amount of significance in the world of the Digital Humanities. The importance of this project is to share research on the history of photography linked to social media. Through the use of the interactive tool Selfiexploratory, one can discover and share useful information based off of looking at each city, age, gender, pose, specific features, and determined mood.

 

 

 

Instagram is used daily as a form of self expression and communication. According to Statista, in June of 2018 there were over 1 billion active Instagram users. In order to successfully create a project that studied selfie behavior and social media, the project creators chose to strictly use selfies from what may be considered the most popular form of social media for uploading selfies- Instagram.

 

 

Selficity presents copious amounts of interesting data representing ways to study human behavior through the use of social media. This project benefits others through the exploration of facial expressions and behaviors on social media that are easily accessible and digitally archived.