I just read an interesting, yet also disturbing piece at the „New Yorker“. A quote from there:
„The Instagram era has now brought us the selfie in a concentration camp. Or, as the phenomenon was identified in the title of a new Israeli Facebook page (translated here loosely), With My Besties in Auschwitz. The page culled from real-life photos—most of them also taken down recently—that had been posted on social-media sites by Israeli kids on school trips to Poland.“ (from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/06/should-auschwitz-be-a-site-for-selfies.html).
My immediate question was: What are WE – being social anthropologists – to do with these new social media phenomena?
When I take a picture, let`s say a „selfie“, and put it on my personal Facebook page, or share it in a FB group: whose picture is this (selfie)? Am I still able to control my images today? How much privacy does there exist in a socially media(ted) world?
It reminded me on the keynote theme from Nishant Shah, as well as on the post-privacy lecture from Carsten Ochs last year. If anyone wanted to pick up on such arguments — contributing an analysis for our blog http://transformations-blog.com/ — feel encouraged to share your insights, and/or forward this call to whoever you think might be interested, and qualified to do this.
@Carsten Ochs: Of course, we`d love to read something from you if you were interested! 🙂
And just to make it clear, This „call for analysis“ is not about moralizing at all — of course, from a personal point of view I find these things disgusting — , it is rather about a changing image culture, and how this change affects other things such as (in this example) the „culture of memories“. Excited to read from you…