Selfies, self-witnessing and the 'out-of-place' digital citizen

Abstract

The placemaking selfie documents a complex relationship between embodied social context and networked socialmedia presence. The complexity of these placemaking selfies is particularly apparent in the 'out-of-place' selfie, taken at a location considered too austere for what is often cast as a frivolous act. Rather than moving to quickly condemn these out-of-place selfies, this chapter explores how we might read such gestures as attempts to negotiate two overlapping frames-one embodied and physically situated, and the other circulating within an affective imagined community. This act of 'self-witnessing' serves as a formof parasocial civic engagement that attempts to communicate one's own place within interpenetrating social spaces, no matter how gawking or disengaged they may appear at first analysis.