The Science of Selfies: A Five-City Comparison
Where do they smile the most? The least? Who poses most expressively?
When the magisterial Oxford English Dictionary crowned "selfie" the word of the year in 2013, it only affirmed what anyone with a smartphone has known since the first photo with the hashtag selfie was posted on January 16, 2011: Self-documentation has gone viral. According to Unmetric, a company that analyzes social media for global brands, 73 million selfies have been posted on Instagram since then.
What we didn't know was that selfie-takers in Bangkok are younger than those in New York; women take more than men; and the smile factor varies from city to city.
The research can be found at selfiecity, a project directed by Lev Manovich, a professor at the Graduate Center, City University of
