“Do I Look Like My Selfie?”: Filters and the Digital-Forensic Gaze

Filtered faces are some of the most heavily engaged photos on social media. The vast majority of literature on selfies have focused on self-reported practices of creating and posting selfies and how subjects view themselves, but research on using filters and the kinds of looking filter provoke is underexplored.

Filtered faces are some of the most heavily engaged photos on social media. The vast majority of literature on selfies have focused on self-reported practices of creating and posting selfies and how subjects view themselves, but research on using filters and the kinds of looking filter provoke is underexplored. Part of a larger project, this analysis draws from a study using photo-elicitation techniques to discuss selfie filters with 12 focus groups, exploring the dominant discourses of cis-gendered looking within digital sociality. We explore how participants edit their selfies, imagine potential audiences, interact with, and perceive the filtering behaviors of others, asking what the “work” of filters is, visually and socially. We probe the kinds of discourses filters participate in, and their gendered and affective dimensions. Our focus groups indicate that when looking at the selfies of others there is often an a priori assumption that filtering has been applied, whether conspicuously or not, to the extent that visual tune-ups have become central to the genre itself. As such, we explore the ambivalence and anxiety about authenticity that filters produce, as well as the intense looking practices aimed at decoding the legitimacy of images. We posit that filters are part of a digital ecosystem that demands an intensification of looking practices, which produce and enhance specific forms of objectification directed toward selves and others within digital environments.