Mapping selfies and memes as Touch

by Fiona Andreallo

Overview

This open access book offers a rich and nuanced analysis of digitally networked socialities as culturally meaningful relationships of Touch. Focusing on the ways Touch is practised in everyday social interactions serves as a basis for how Touch is understood as multiply significant – physically, emotionally, intellectually and politically. Andreallo initiates a map of the fundamentals of Touch and how they can be considered for future research in considering digitally networked cultures. This map also serves as a basis for closely examining selfies and memes. Examining social networks of Touch, Andreallo focuses on a specific example of the PrettyGirlsUglyFaces meme and ugly selfies(uglies). Through this example, memes and selfies are mapped as Touch involving textures of both intimacy and violence. Andreallo also discusses technological seamlessness and cultural semefulness as conversations of social relationships of Touch, and proposes the term semeful sociabilities to describe how the everyday technological self engages in practices of Touch. This book is a compact, approachable insight into selfies and memes as everyday culturally networked Touch relationships that also offers a way forward in recognising technological relationships as culturally meaningful.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030943158
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	06/10/2022
Edition description:	1st ed. 2022
Pages:	116
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Fiona Andreallo is a Postdoctoral, Early Career fellow at RMIT University, Design and Social Context, Melbourne, Australia. She is also an Honorary Research Associate at The University of Sydney, Media and Communications, Sydney, Australia. Fiona’s research focuses on human-technological relationships, communication and cultures. She has previously published in areas of social media, social robotics and technological relationships towards personalised care. Her research approach is shaped by her background as a digital media artist. In her research, she has worked with prominent stakeholders, including local government, art galleries, private care companies, and The Sydney Institute for Robotics and Information Systems (SIRIS).

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Visual social relationships of memes and selfies, and how they imply Touch.- Chapter 3: How Touch works in everyday networked social relationships.- Chapter 4: Mapping Touch of (ugly) selfies, memes, and jokes as forms of intimacy and violence.- Chapter 5: Semeful sociabilities: socially networked photography as embodied relationships of Touch.- Chapter 6: Key takeaways and prospective research.