New Academic Conference Paper: “Dawn of the Selfie Era: The Whos, Wheres, and Hows of Selfies on Instagram”

Here’s a new and very interesting conference paper by researchers in Brazil and South Korea.
It will be presented at the ACM Conference on Online Social Networks 2015 taking place in about one week at Stanford University.
Title
Dawn of the Selfie Era: The Whos, Wheres, and Hows of Selfies on Instagram
Authors
Flávio Souza
UFMG, Brazil
Diego de Las Casa
UFMG, Brazil
Vinícius Flores
UFMG, Brazil
SunBum Youn
Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, South Korea
Meeyoung Cha
Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, South Korea
Daniele Quercia
Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, South Korea
Virgílio Almeida
UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Source
via arXiv
Abstract

Online interactions are increasingly involving images, especially those containing human faces, which are naturally attention grabbing and more effective at conveying feelings than text. To understand this new convention of digital culture, we study the collective behavior of sharing selfies on Instagram and present how people appear in selfies and which patterns emerge from such interactions.
Analysis of millions of photos shows that the amount of selfies has increased by 900 times from 2012 to 2014. Selfies are an effective medium to grab attention; they generate on average 1.1–3.2 times more likes and comments than other types of content on Instagram. Compared to other content, interactions involving selfies exhibit variations in homophily scores (in terms of age and gender) that suggest they are becoming more widespread. Their style also varies by cultural boundaries in that the average age and majority gender seen in selfies differ from one country to another. We provide explanations of such country-wise variations based on cultural and socioeconomic contexts.

Direct to Full Text Paper (11 pages; PDF)

Filed under: Journal Articles, News