Hands on: Exploring Selfiecity
For today's class you have read Alice Tifentale and Lev Manovich's article about the Selfiecity Links to an external site. project. You'll remember that they had some very quantitative findings. People in Brazil smile more, there are more women in Moscow, Asians tilt their heads more, that kind of thing. The project has been criticized for being like physiognomy Links to an external site., where people measured heads and looked at faces and thought they could draw conclusions about peoples' intelligence.
Your assignment is to thoroughly explore the selfieexploratory part of the project and discuss in pairs or threes or all together whether you think you could come to other, more qualitative conclusions from data like this.
Further reading:
Wikipedia on Cultural Analytics Links to an external site., which Selfiecity is an example of.
Elizabeth Losh's critical essay about the project: "Feminism Reads Big Data: “Social Physics,” Atomism, and Selfiecity". International Journal of Communication 9(2015), 1647–1659 http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/3152/1390 Links to an external site.
Lev Manovich writing on Facebook about unpublished data from Selfiecity about smiles: https://www.facebook.com/groups/664091916962292/permalink/989097694461711/ Links to an external site.
Lev Manovich on Facebook announcing a new city, Selfiecity London: https://www.facebook.com/groups/664091916962292/permalink/995676947137119/ Links to an external site.
The comments to Liz Losh's critical essay about the methods used in Selfiecity are interesting: https://www.facebook.com/groups/664091916962292/permalink/671387282899422/ Links to an external site.