The selfie as a global discourse

Abstract

This article presents a critical multimodal discourse analysis of how people make meaning through the semiotic practice of shooting digital self-portraits (selfies), adding captions and then sharing these texts on the social network site Instagram. Combining theories from social semiotics, critical discourse analysis and multimodal discourse analysis, the analysis focuses on the embedded ideological meaning in such digital communication. The analysis explores a data corpus of 100 selfies shared on Instagram. Despite the fact that digital texts shared on social media are generally regarded as personal communication, selfie makers seem to reproduce features of a commercial and global discourse. The typical way of representing oneself on Instagram appears to be surprisingly similar to visual representations in advertisements and image banks. The linguistic resources in use also appear globalized through a mix of languages combined with slang and abbreviations.