ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to empirically examine means of communicating emotion through visual content-sharing applications. Building my argument by drawing on data collected from Georgia Institute of Technology, Mashable, Pew Research Center, Suggestme, Statista, and TechInfographics, I performed analyses and made estimates regarding U.S. adults who have ever taken a selfie and uploaded it to a social media website (%, by age group), selfies taken by category of the photographer (%), most popular cities to take a selfie in (% of all analyzed selfies), % saying they have shared a selfie (Millennial, Gen X, Boomer, and Silent), where selfies are being shared the most (%, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest), number of selfies posted weekly (%, by gender), and ways of sharing selfies (%, by demographic profile). Empirical data for this research were collected through an online survey conducted in the United States. The structural equation modeling technique was employed to test the research model.

Keywords: selfie; communication; emotion; visual content-sharing application

How to cite: Sion, Grațiela (2019). “Self-Portraits in Social Media: Means of Communicating Emotion through Visual Content-Sharing Applications,” Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 18: 133–139. doi:10.22381/LPI1820199

Received 2 December 2018 • Received in revised form 14 March 2019
Accepted 17 March 2019 • Available online 19 April 2019