Characterization and analysis of selfies and photos with faces on instagram

Abstract

One particular kind of photo posted on Instagram that has attracted attention in the last few years is the selfie. Nonetheless, there has been little research on the factors associated with the presence of selfies online. This thesis tries to fill this gap by studying the characteristics of selfies, of photos with faces and of general pictures posted on Instagram. Three kinds of investigations are performed using samples carefully extracted from a large dataset collected from Instagram: characterization, temporal analyses, and spatial analyses. The results collectively show that selfies are very popular and are different from other types of content. In quantitatively capturing those differences, this thesis contributes to a better comprehension of the selfie phenomenon, serving as a starting point for other researches that can provide important insights into subjects like digital cultural norms and design of social-networking platforms.