A Semiotic Interpretation of Online Selfie Culture
In: Chinese Semiotic Studies, Band 14, Heft 4, S. 419-434
ISSN: 2198-9613
Abstract
The awakening or crisis of individual self-consciousness has been frequently included in the study of online selfie culture, while the reinforcement of public self-consciousness, the strengthening of civil confidence, and even the resurgence of national confidence can be detected from its popularity when studied with the application of Lotman's cultural semiotics, especially the unique dialogic mechanism as well as Lotman's viewpoint on the space–time structure of the semiosphere. With dialogue situation created and meaning generated, textual dialogues help the construction of self-consciousness through the "I–I" and "I–s/he" system; cultural dialogues make it ultimately welcomed by mainstream culture, which embodies the enhancement of mass self-consciousness. In the semiosphere, selfies reconstruct our self-consciousness in the time–space structure of cultures. The shift of self-consciousness from low-profile to high-profile represents the booming confidence of the Chinese. As a work of art is a finite model of an infinite universe, a "picture of the world," selfies are also the pictures of growing national confidence.