Posting #selfie on Instagram: What are People Talking About?

Abstract

Due to the rise in popularity with Instagram and posting selfies, and the potential negative outcomes on psychosocial health, the purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate the nature of the comments/captions left by users on #selfie photographs.  A secondary objective was to investigate the characteristics of the author posting the #selfie image. Approximately 4,500 posts were analyzed for word content and networking, and author’s sex, age, location, number of posts, and the number of followers and following were collected. The most common words associated with #selfie were to gather more followers and/or likes, followed by image descriptors, feelings, or were Instagram-specific.  Among the #selfie authors, being female (p = 0.023) and the number of posts (p <0.001) were associated with having a following to follower ratio greater than 1. This is the first analysis of the #selfie conversation on Instagram, however, further research is needed to determine the motivation for posting #selfies and/or the impact of posting #selfies and gaining more followers/likes.