Selfie Love: Public Lives in an Era of Celebrity Pleasure, Violence, and Social Media

Dreaming of the Kardashians: Media Content in the Dreams of US College Students

“…The idea of a special kind of subjectivity in which one sees oneself reflected in the eye of the other—which Shipley links to Lacan's notion of the mirror phase (, 413)—is repeatedly suggested in the oneiric material I present here, as well as by the “selfie culture” that Shipley and my own students describe. This phenomenological doubling, I believe, is a basic neurological affordance (Merleau‐Ponty ) but one that has been vastly amplified by the media ecologies I describe here.…”

“…In his recent photo–essay, the anthropologist Jesse Weaver Shipley contemplates similar themes in his consideration of the emergence of “selfies.” Often calculatedly ironic in their stance, these proliferating smartphone‐produced self‐portraits, Shipley notes, are tied to celebrity culture and to the rise of social media. When posted on a social media site, selfies “point to practices of reflexive self‐fashioning” and are “intended to provoke commentary, responses, and recirculation” (, 410). Teens and celebrities, he argues, are at the center of “selfiness”—which Shipley and others (Marwick and boyd ; Marwick ) describe as if it were not just an embodied, networked practice but a genuinely transformational cultural moment.…”

Parody after identity: Digital music and the politics of uncertainty in West Africa

“…Bloggers and publicists who use social media as their main tool have been key to building Ghana's entertainment industry (Shipley ). Ameyaw Debra, one of the country's best‐known celebrity and lifestyle bloggers, explained that he advises artists to share music and personal details and “tag more famous people” to build networks, because “fame breed more fame.” Artists, he said, must “draw fans into their intimate lives in order to get music to them.”…”

If You Were in My Sneakers: Migration Stories in the Studio Photography of Dakar‐Based Omar Victor Diop

“…Diop's portraits invite self‐reflection. Like selfies, Diop's self‐portraits are a “genre of autobiography or memoir that makes the image maker into the protagonist of stories of his or her own composition” (Shipley , 403). But unlike selfies, which we think of as unmediated images, portraits are mediated by the artistry of the photographer and the proficiency of the client in posing in the studio space.…”