Moshimoshi folks!

Continuing from March’s newly minted tradition of procrastiprogress updates from the cave, I bring you more condensed scholarly updates from wishcrys land.

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The Special Issue of Social Media + Society (SM+S) on selfies is finally live!

Read ‘Me-diated Inter-faces’ here in its open-access glory, and check out the introduction co-authored by Katie Warfield, Carolina Cambre, and yours truly here.

The whole production was a whirlpool of excitement from the start to the finish, considering that our authors first met on the internet via The Selfies Research Network in early 2015, and met in the flesh in Jun 2015 when we ran a pedagogical session on selfies at the Social Media and Society Conference in Toronto. We considered a special issue publication in Jul 2015, had our authors produce full articles for double peer review in Sep 2015, finalized and submitted the articles in Nov 2015, and were queued for publication in Apr 2016.

All this would not have been possible without my genius collaborators, Katie and Carolina, from whom I am learning to be a kickass mentor as I progress in my academic career. Also, a huge thank you to our authors, Tamar Tembeck, Cristina Miguel, Stefanie Duguay, and Gaby David for being the most efficient people in the world. All the internet affect also to Fiona Andreallo, Jocelyn Murtell, and Fiona Whitting (and Jo Wedlock!) for making the SM&S Conference a super fun experience – grownup sleepovers, saving cheese and wine from flies, and arm cheese included. Finally, a special thanks to Stacy Blasiola of SM+S for overseeing the publication process with A+ patience and professionalism :)

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Also in the Special Issue on Selfies is my article on Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity. Read it here.

Continuing from last year’s milestone of using an emoji in the title of my journal article, this new milestone included publishing my own selfie in a legit refereed paper ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ

I thoroughly enjoy academia and internet culture, so what better way to integrate both than to legitimately publish “subversive frivolity”? (you have to read the paper!)

My next creative aims include titling a paper in emoticons/leet only, inserting gifs in an electronic paper, and hiding easter eggs somewhere somehow.

On a more serious note, during the writing process, I contemplated long and hard over whether or not to recount and publicise the opening/closing vignette in which an academic brushed off my research, and branded my informants as “young, rich women doing vain things online”. To be honest, it was this exchange that sparked off the idea for this paper to begin with.

I believe anger can be a very productive and motivating force, and channelled all my feels into illuminating the important girl labour in which my informants partake, and pushing back against the discourse of selfies and young women selfie-takers as mere frivolity.

My forthcoming paper on “agentic cuteness” shares a similar ‘origins story’ (cf. x-men, whoo hoo), but I’ll save that for next month.

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Last but not least, PopAnth’s latest interview featuring leading expert Gabriella Coleman and her thoughts on Anonymous’ recent humorous trolling is now up. Read it here.

The Section Editors of PopAnth have been on the prowl for fresh talent and exciting articles for the last few months, so stay tuned for our upcoming string of commissioned writing.

If you’d like to contribute to PopAnth, check out our guide here.

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