Coalescing the mirror and the screen: consuming the 'self' online. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ibrahim, Yasmin
• Is Part Of: Continuum. Volume 31:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 104
• Page End: 113
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Motion pictures -- Australia -- Periodicals; Broadcasting -- Australia -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Periodicals; 306.05
• DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2016.1239066
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1030-4312

Abstract

Abstract: While humanity has always found means to represent itself through material artefacts, the digital age and its attendant screen culture offer interesting ways to ubiquitously capture and to produce the self as a digital artefact online for personal and public consumption. The non-stop capture of ourselves and our specular double are distinctive to digital living where the self can be objectified and consumed relentlessly, and where others can partake in consuming us. This paper argues that the self remains a primal subject of interest online sustaining our 'mirror moment' of self-discovery and recognition. Our fascination with the self is elevated further through our social and historical valorization of the screen, which has over time stood for public spectacle and voyeurism. The screen, once the preserve of newsmakers, the celebrity or the morbid, has been disaggregated into a theatre for the consumption of the self. This ubiquitous consumption of the screen is premised through the concepts of the mirror and the screen in this paper.