Colescing the Mirror and Screen

Coalescing the Mirror and the Screen

Consuming the ‘Self’ Online

 Continuum
DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2016.1239066
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2016.1239066

Abstract;

While humanity has always found means to represent itself through material artefacts, the digital age and its attendant screen culture offer interesting ways to ubiquitously capture and to produce the self as a digital artefact online for personal and public consumption. The non-stop capture of ourselves and our specular double are distinctive to digital living where the self can be objectified and consumed relentlessly, and where others can partake in consuming us. This paper argues that the self remains a primal subject of interest online sustaining our ‘mirror moment’ of self-discovery and recognition. Our fascination with the self is elevated further through our social and historical valorisation of the screen, which has over time stood for public spectacle and voyeurism. The screen, once the preserve of newsmakers, the celebrity or the morbid, has been disaggregated into a theatre for the consumption of the self. This ubiquitous consumption of the screen is premised through the concepts of the mirror and the screen in this paper. 

Copies at;
 http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/25CTrAc2JqAJS44TEcf5/full

Self-representation and the disaster event: self-imaging, morality and immortality

Moral Limits of Self-Representation and Disaster Sites

My paper published in the Journal of Media Practice 16(3) entitled, Self-representation and the disaster event: self-imaging, morality and immortality, examines the ethics of capturing and imaging the self against disaster sites.

 

 

Abstract, 

There's growing interest in the notion of the ‘selfie’ in the digital age. Much of the interest has been making sense of this digital genre pervasive in its manifestation while implicating the individual and hinging on public gaze in digital platforms. As a form of self-representation, the selfie reveals the complex interplay of identity politics and self-curation where the self is amenable to multiple iterations of public gaze. This article, drawing on this complex interplay, inspects a specific phenomenon in this selfie culture where there is a tendency to picture oneself against the scene of trauma or tragedy. The ‘disaster selfie’ or ‘disaster porn’ as a particular genre invokes questions of the moral limit in the objectification and aestheticisation of self. This article explores the moral politics of disaster selfies, the role of the abject and our quest for immortality where these invoke a wider crisis for visuality and image ethics online.

Copies at link, http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/jgFKhGFYTNpzcgdFnYHH/full