Digital News: 'Selfie' Craze Story Development & Research

Snapchat 'selfie' craze: Is it going too far?

Following on from my previous post about the 'selfie' story we are planning on using, my group and I got back together to discuss what exactly we are going to do for this story.

We begun by beginning to research the controversy of 'selfies' - how you can argue that its gone too far from just being social and fun where it is getting into more serious matters which can be problematic for these 'selfie' victims.

Below is a report of a bus driver taking selfies of himself in America. This at first seems acceptable, however he has then taken a selfie with him and young school children on the bus journey. Of course this may be a problem for the children's parents, knowing that a fully grown man is taking pictures of them on his iPad. However can it be argued as a crime?

http://www.kmov.com/news/local/First-Student-denies-bus-driver-took-selfies-with-students-274973451.html

This is a sort of story which we want to aim for, however have a balanced argument on Snapchat itself so that our report isn't biased. So we then decided to point out the key arguments for and against selfies, which you can see below:

For Snapchat Selfies

- Allows you to virtually talk face-to-face without being directly with each other.
- Boosts people confidence with how they look: taking these pictures can make you feel comfortable
  about yourself
- Purely for entertainment: socialising with your friends, sharing things through images without
  having to text, etc.
- Its generally creative: you can edit pictures in anyway and it keeps your mind thinking.
- Celebrity endorsement: People want snapchat if celebrities have it. It generally makes people
  discuss what celebrities have posted and allows them to learn more about their desired celebrity.

Against Snapchat Selfies

- People can find it annoying. Constantly walking around seeing people take selfies of themselves for
  pointless things. It can generally just be a bit OTT?
- There have been controversial topics which people can be disgusted by. For example, a trend called
  #aftersexselfie: people taking selfies of the aftermath of a night out... laying in bed with someone
  who they don't know. Theres even been a leak on Snapchat of a hacker finding nudes of celebrities.
- The amount of time some people may take to take a selfie and edit it is questionable. Could this time
  be used instead for something more beneficial? You could read something interesting in this time for
  example.

My group and I then decided to research a bit into some of these issues about Snapchat, so that we have backed up evidence and statistics supporting our points. Some of these can be seen below:

#AfterSexSelfie Controversial Trend

We aim to focus our story on a controversial topic (mentioned above) so that our audience have an idea what our story is about. Below is an article by the Daily Mail talking about this #AfterSexSelfie:

Daily Mail article about the trend:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2593943/aftersex-selfie-trend-goes-viral-Instagram.html

This issue can be argued to be very controversial. It consists of typically younger people posting the after math result of going out and waking up seeing that they are with someone whom they don't know, or a similar story, etc. This would be posted to social network sites such as Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook using the trend hashtag '#AfterSexSelfie' which in some cases would go viral, leading to some faces to been seen by thousands over the net. Therefore, this will be included within our 'balanced report' as most of our audience will be able to relate to this (as they are students) and know what this trend is about.

Snapchat builds your self-confidence… But could it build it too much?

What do you think -
Art or Vanity?

Of course its always good knowing that social networking sites can help to boost people's confidence, but can you argue that it may build your self-confidence too much? After listening to a few people's thoughts and even researching online, Snapchat and other sites have almost driven people to become in love with themselves. Some people's selfies are beginning to come pointless and are almost leading to pictures being taken just for the sake of it.

This is proven from statistics from a site we found called edudemic, which has gathered statistics showing how these selfies can be causing a problem. The site tries to explain how excessive it is coming, that the time instead could be used for something more beneficial such as reading an article or 'cleaning your car' (see below).

But is this a good or a bad thing? 

A link to this website can be seen below:

http://www.edudemic.com/selfie-infographic/

We also found additional statistics and a modern report which we could use for our report:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/20/snapchat-messaging-app-ad-creepy-ouija

Privacy… Is it there?

Like almost every social networking site and anything to deal with the internet, there will always be this problem with people's privacy. Moving on from the AfterSexSelfie trend, the whole issue of privacy is very limited, as Snapchat allows people to screen shot images from one another which could initially wanted to be private. In behalf of Snapchat however, the persons whose image is being print screened is notified therefore the users of Snapchat should be fully beware that the images can be copied. Therefore, Snapchat may've had intentions to be private, however this has caused many personal problems and has even led to celebrity nude images to be hacked and shown on the application.

Are we becoming Narcissists?

Our group discussion then led to something most people wouldn't think of. Although this isn't entirely digging on Snapchat, you could argue that those who are obsessed with technology and your mobile phone may be missing what is actually in front of you - literally. What if we are becoming too self-obsessed with the desire for selfies, or tweeting etc, that you could miss something potentially memorable or a point of discussion right in front or around you?

Detectorists, BBC 4

This then led us to talking about the BBC 4 programme Detectorists. I haven't watched the programme myself however the discussion was about an episode where the characters were too focused on metal detecting that they missed the red arrows fly past them (they didn't hear it due to their headphones).
Although this is possibly an exaggeration (as the programme is a comedy) - the programme does have a point. You never know what you could miss if you are too involved on your phone/tablet/gadgets!

'Planking' - laying on anything the way
you want to then taking a picture

What exactly is a 'selfie'?

Moving on, to help introduce our story, we thought it would be essential to explain what a selfie is. This could be shown by a montage from a variety of different types of selfies: babies, teenagers, parents - even animals. We could even include the adaptations of selfies, such as the popularly known stunt
called 'Planking' (see image to the right).

The First ever selfie -
taken by Robert Cornelius
in 1839.

Nonetheless, we could show the actual definition of 'selfies' on our news report (through the use of graphics). After looking online, it is apparent that the first ever 'selfie' was back in 1839 by Robert Cornelius. Nowhere near as easy as it is to take selfies now, the process was so slow for him to take the picture that he was 'able to run into the shot for a minute or more to replace the lens cap' (as quoted by Wikipedia) - a bit slower compared to nowadays. In fact, this image is called a Daguerreotype - one of the first ever pictures to be taken of a person on camera. Information like this would be quite interesting for our news report - you wouldn't think that the first selfie would be this long ago (well I didn't anyway), so acts as a useful piece of knowledge.

Of course, the selfie craze didn't evolve this long ago. It was firstly recognised on MySpace and discussed by photographer Jim Krause in 2005. Nonetheless the first record of the word actually being used was from the image site Flickr - it used this term to describe 'the seemingly endless self portraits posted by teenage girls'.

How could this be defined?

I begun by looking on popular sites where there might actually be an official definition of the slang word 'selfie'. Below are some of the results which I came up with:

Wikipedia

Although Wikipedia isn't entirely reliable (in general) for slang words, this is what its definition was:

"A selfie is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. Selfies are often shared onsocial networking services such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. They are usually flattering and made to appear casual. Most selfies are taken with a camera held at arm's length or pointed at a mirror, rather than by using a self-timer."

(website link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie)

Urban Dictionary

Popular for its clarified definition of almost every slang word, below is their definition:

"A picture taken of yourself that is planned to be uploaded to Facebook, Myspace or any other sort of social networking website. You can usually see the person's arm holding out the camera in which case you can clearly tell that this person does not have any friends to take pictures of them so they resort to Myspace to find internet friends and post pictures of themselves, taken by themselves. A selfie is usually accompanied by a kissy face or the individual looking in a direction that is not towards the camera."

(website link: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Selfie)

Oxford Dictionary

Infact, the word selfie has now even been added to the oxford dictionary - showing its popularity.

informal

A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcamand shared via social media:'occasional selfies are acceptable, but posting a new picture of yourself every day isn’t necessary'

Therefore, my group and I will decide which definition to use for our report, however we are more than likely to use the fact about the first ever selfie. We could even make this suitable for our audience by making it interactive i.e. to guess what year it was then reveal which year it was at the end of the report. This could be used to interact from our website which we will make.

Structuring our Story

Although this is only a rough idea, we also briefly planned the structure of our story, to see if we need to add anything extra to make the story seem more effective. Below is our first structuring idea:

Studio (presenter) - lead to package - INTRO: definition of 'selfie' (graphics, VOT) - trends of snapchat. For example, #aftersexselfies, snapchat art, etc. - Interviews arguing for selfies - end.

Idea Feedback

After we felt comfortable with our story idea, we spoke to our course leader Helen to see how we were doing and to ask her any questions we had relating to this story and our news report in general. The discussion was very useful, we've made a few minor changes however there are a couple of ideas which we can focus on as we begin to find members for our stories and then begin to script it:

SHOW it, don't tell it!

GoPro camera. This idea can work
as I have recently purchased the
GoPro Hero 3+.

These are the wise words which are course leader said to us. She mentioned instead of just talking about the statistics, people's opinions, and so on, what if we added a literal story or even a 'stunt' which works in an entertaining way to explain what we are trying to say? For example, we came up with the idea of having a 'masterclass': trying to find a master selfie expert who could explain to us how to take a selfie and literally show us, which could then lead into interviews about the potential problems it may cause.

This idea of showing it makes alot of sense as we want to keep our audience engaged - especially our news channel in particular as we are targeting a younger audience. We could even use a GoPro camera to help to intensify what the audience are seeing - thus furthermore helping to keep them motivated to keep on watching our news report.

This idea has been taken in by my group and I which will be brainstormed and worked on as the week goes by!