[ecrea] Selfie Citizenship research workshop, 16 April, Manchester Metropolitan University

Please mark your calendars. Registration details will appear soon on our 
website, https://sites.google.com/site/selfiecitizenship/home



Selfie Citizenship Research Workshop

16 April 2015, @The Shed, Digital Innovation, MMU

Organised by Adi Kuntsman, Farida Vis and Simon Faulkner

Sponsored by Digital Innovation, Manchester Metropolitan University,
and The Visual Social Media Lab, The University of Sheffield

https://sites.google.com/site/selfiecitizenship/home



The workshop brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines, 
fields and backgrounds to explore the notion of “selfie citizenship” -- 
the growing use of the selfie-genre and, more broadly, the networked 
circulations of individual and group self-portraits for “acts of 
citizenship” (Isin 2008).

In the recent years we have become accustomed to photographs of 
individuals with hand-written banners, as well as to various selfie 
memes and hashtag actions (#NoMakeUpSelfie, #WeAreAllClean, 
#SmearforSmear as well as #ICan’tBreathe, #BlackLivesMatter and 
#UseMeInstead, to mention just a few), spread on social media as actions 
of protest and political or social statements. Their circulation is 
global, and their iconography is often deceivingly similar, yet their 
motivations, causes and context vary – some stand against police abuse 
or military occupation, others call for clearer cities or smaller 
classrooms, yet others promote a charity cause or a social awareness, 
and there are those that incite violence or call for a war.  Further, 
while some perform citizenship as a form of nationalism, other mobilise 
notions of global citizenship, and yet others operate in contexts where 
citizenship is absent, in question or violently denied.

Such mobilisation of the selfie genre – understood broadly as 
self-portraits in viral digital circulation – clearly challenges the 
prevalent popular view of selfies as narcissistic, inherently 
a-political and even anti-social. Yet selfie citizenship still remains 
to be theorised, both as a framework for different understanding of 
selfies, and as a way to think differently about citizenship in the 
social media age. This workshop was set up to create a space for an 
intellectual and political conversation around the notion of selfie 
citizenship, bringing together scholars of visual culture, social and 
digital media, and cultural citizenship, into a much needed dialogue 
that explores the work of selfies, but also charts new directions to 
think about citizenship as a political, affective, visual and networked 
phenomenon.



---
Dr. Adi Kuntsman
Lecturer in Digital Media
Department of Languages, Information and Communications
Manchester Metropolitan University
Geoffrey Manton, Rosamond Street West
Manchester M15 6LL
https://sites.google.com/site/adikuntsman/

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