#Funeral and Instagram: death,social media,and platform vernacular

This paper presents findings from a study of Instagram use and funerary practices that analysed photographs shared on public profiles tagged with ‘#funeral’. We found that the majority of images uploaded with the hashtag #funeral often communicated a person's emotional circumstances and affective context, and allowed them to reposition their funeral experience amongst wider networks of acquaintances, friends, and family. We argue that photo-sharing through Instagram echoes broader shifts in commemorative and memorialization practices, moving away from formal and institutionalized rituals to informal and personalized, vernacular practices. Finally, we consider how Instagram's ‘platform vernacular’ unfolds in relation to traditions and contexts of death, mourning, and memorialization. This research contributes to a broader understanding of how platform vernaculars are shaped through the logics of architecture and use. This research also directly contributes to the understanding of death and digital media by examining how social media is being mobilized in relation to death, the differences that different media platforms make, and the ways social media are increasingly entwined with the places, events, and rituals of mourning.     

大学生自拍行为问卷的编制与信效度检验

在文献分析和半开放式访谈的基础上编制自拍行为问卷,对702名大学生进行调查,对数据进行项目分析、探索性因子分析、验证性因子分析和信度分析。探索性因子分析显示大学生自拍问卷由自拍依赖、自拍困扰、自拍共享及自拍情绪等四个维度构成,四个因子可解释总变异的68.179%;验证性因子分析显示自拍问卷结构效度良好;总量表及分量表的各个信度指标均高于0.70,效标关联效度较好。问卷信效度符合心理测量学的标准,能够作为测量大学生自拍行为的工具。     

理想建构抑或算法规训 ——年轻女性习惯性自拍编辑行为的质性考察

基于上行社会比较的自我建构让个体制造出线上展演的“完美”幻象,而美颜技术在增强个体社交自信心的同时也伴随了形象焦虑,二者的循环作用让年轻女性深陷美颜依赖。美颜依赖引发的心理落差及消极身体认知可能引发包括节食减肥和整形在内的身体实践。习惯性自拍编辑行为的背后隐藏着算法对身体的控制,技术表面上为理想自我建构创造条件,实质上却带来了机械化身体形态与标准化审美等问题。为避免被媒介幻象支配、减少负面情绪及有害的身体实践,年轻女性应尝试正视和接纳真实的自我形象,并对照片编辑（美颜）软件保持适度接触。     

‘My anorexia story’: girls constructing narratives of identity on YouTube

The phenomenon of pro-anorexia (‘pro-ana’) communities has attracted extensive academic attention over the last 15 years, with feminist scholars fascinated by the political complexities of such cultures. But the internet has also enabled a range of eating disorder recovery cultures to emerge – whether organized around blogs, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube – and such spaces have been largely ignored by feminist scholarship which has fetishized the apparently more resistant and controversial discourses of pro-ana. As such, this article explores a set of videos posted on YouTube under the title of ‘My anorexia story’ which present narratives of recovery, or efforts to recover, from anorexia. Primarily produced by white, Western, teenage girls, these videos are effectively slide shows made up of written text and photographs, with selfies of the body sitting at their core. The conceptual and political significance of self-representation has been seen as central to the construction of subjectivity within the digital media landscape, with particular attention paid to the ways in which such practices compare, speak back to, or challenge the existing representational discourses of ‘dominant’ media and wider relations of social power. In this regard, this article explores questions of agency in gendered self-representation, examining what kinds of self-narratives the girls are producing about anorexia. In doing so, it examines how the stories seek to ‘author’ and regulate the meanings of the anorexic body; how these constructions intersect with dominant constructions of anorexia (such as those offered by medical discourse and the media); as well as the implications of the aesthetic strategies they employ. In considering how the narratives visualize, display and ‘expose’ the anorexic body, I draw upon a growing area of work which examines the selfie in relation discourses of surveillance, visibility and selfhood.     

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.