Selfie can be examined through various facial expressions, from exploration of the issues of self and identity to silent resistance to idealized facial expressions like “duck face”, “sparrow face”, and “cute face”. By using self-disclosure and looking-glass self as theoretical perspective as well as adolescence developmental tasks, this preliminary qualitative research aims to describe how students of University Putra Malaysia (UPM) from BA of (Foreign Language) German take their selfie and why. I want to explain about facial expression through selfie. Past research on facial expressions of emotion has focused on the study of six basic categories such as cheerfulness, shock, anger, sadness, horror and dislike. Nowadays more facial expression is found when people take selfie such as duck face, sparrow face, large iris, cute face, bored face and so on. I want to explore about the reason of facial expression that BA German student try to exposes and show. I want to know about the reason behind all the facial expressions that they try to present when taking selfie and the factors of these phenomena. I want to understand, I did not notice this trend among selfie poses by German people. Furthermore, it is interesting and make me feel excited to explore and make other people know the reason of taking selfie with facial expression.
Chapter 1
1.0 Introduction
Emotions are an incredibly important aspect of human life and basic research on emotions of the past few decades has produced several discoveries that have led to important real world applications. Every people have emotion and people express their emotion in daily life. A lot of emotion people exposed day by day and exposed with facial expression through selfie in social media. To present their emotions that day with caption related to their expression but sometimes without any captain we still know what they want to present to followers or friends in social media. We can predict their poses of facial expression such as duck face, cute face, sparrow face, and etc. It was a new phenomenon nowadays.
A facial expression results from one or more movements or positions of the muscles of the face. These developments pass on the enthusiastic condition of the single person to viewers. Facial expressions are a display of nonverbal communication. They are an essential method for passing on social data among people, additionally happen in most different well evolved creatures and some other creature species.
People can receive a facial expression as an intentional activity. Nonetheless, in light of the fact that expressions are nearly fixed to feeling, they are all the more regularly automatic. It can be about difficult to dive expressions for specific feelings, actually when it would be firmly attractive to do as such an individual who is attempting to keep away from insult to an individual he or she finds very ugly may all things considered demonstrate a brief expression of hate before having the capacity to re assume an impartial expression. The nearby connection in the middle of feeling and expression can likewise work in the other course, it has been watched that intentionally accepting an expression can really cause the related feeling.
A few expressions can be exactly translated even between individuals from different species anger and persuasive happiness being the essential illustrations. Others, nonetheless, are hard to figure out even in well-known people. For example, upset and fear can be difficult to differentiate one from the other.
Since looks have just a forced scope of development, expressions depend upon honestly microscopic contrasts in the scope and relative position of facial highlights, and understanding them requires extensive affectability to same. A few appearances are regularly mistakenly scanned as communicating some feeling, actually when they are neutral, on the grounds that their extents commonly look like those another face would incidentally accept when emoting.
Social media can reflect belief, attitude and values toward beauty and can effect changes of cultures when others are exposed to image of ideal beauty and attractive. Especially women always want to feel and present their beauty. Selfie is the most effective trend to use to be somebody popular and to exposed women or men beauty. Based on Wikipedia, “Selfie means photograph that one has taken of oneself typically with a smartphone or webcam to be uploaded into a social media website”.
Based on Oxford English Dictionary (2013) was the year of the selfie. The term was added to the Oxford English Dictionary and esteemed their “oath of the year”! A great many people feel that the selfie was concocted simply a brief time back when Instagram rose to fame, yet it has really had a long and productive past. Think Van Gogh’s self-representations, the first self-taken Polaroid’s, and pixelated flip telephone photographs! Be that as it may selfies have truly turned another leaf in today’s advanced, photograph fixated world, and individuals have designed a plenty of new selfies such as the sleeping selfie, muscle-man selfie, no-makeup selfie, the food selfie, and so on.
Selfies as everybody knows is like, an acceptable online art form now, and you know that it’s a legitimate trend when there’s a movement against it. Just face it. If you spend enough time on any social network, you will eventually run into a photo or two (or 10) of faces taken by their owners, and while some of them are actually pretty creative and cool, most of them are, well, horrible and inappropriate.
Based on The Huffington (2015), “news outlets including The New York Times deemed Kim Kardashian’s hair makeover newsworthy, and now she’s been named one of the 30 Most Influential People on the Internet, according to Time magazine”.
The 34-year-old reality star, who the magazine previously named the second most-influential fictional character of 2014 for her “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” avatar, influences the masses along with Taylor Swift, President Obama, Janet Mock, Beyoncé, J.K. Rowling, Jimmy Fallon and Caitlin McNeill, the woman who launched a debate surrounding “blue and black or white and gold.”
Based on my reading of book Kim Kardashian West: Selfish written by Kim Kardashian (May 5, 2015), 352 pages, selfie also influence by Kim Kardashian. Kardashian might not have proposed it in that capacity, but rather the title of the book is luxuriously filled with informational believable outcomes for the fields of social and philosophical human studies and the confusing thoughts of produced self and selfhood, of ‘stages, props and ensembles’ so articulately clarified by sociologist Ervin Goffman in route in 1959. In clarifying the setting of the thought of her book, Kardashian shows the verbose structural planning of how a selfie is a deliberately built idea of ‘the feeling of being what decides creatures as creatures’. The selfie is ontologically situated in a private space, yet is particularly enunciated and bundled for an open space.
1.1 Problem Statement
The purpose of this study is to investigate student identity by facial expression through selfie because there is no study shows in UPM about the reason why student take a selfie with special facial expression.
I am curious about the meaning of special facial expression like ‘duck face’, ‘sparrow face’ and ‘cute face’ as facial expression that express by BA German students in UPM to take selfie. I really want to know their own reason to do that funny facial expression.
This objective of this study is to explore the reason of meaning of these expressions for them. Nowadays, they try to show new facial expression. They use media social to expose themselves through selfie with special facial expression.
Nowadays, when I open my social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram I see a lot of people take a selfie and post it. They take a selfie with special facial expression. Based on my experience, I see people who taking a selfie always try to shows particular facial expression. It is among my friends, they also take a selfie with special facial expression like ‘duck face’, ‘Sparrow face’ and ‘cute face’.
Based on techinfografics pages from 2013, I look in internet millions are shared each and every day across all the major social media platforms. Indeed, according to data from Samsung, selfies make up almost one-third of all photos taken by people aged 18-24, with Facebook, Instagram, and all media social. According to data from Samsung, 5 million users every day, 100 Millions uploaded photos and 860, 000 photos uploaded every day in social media. The most popular in Australia followed by the U.S and Canada.
It is important to shows the motive why students BA German in UPM, Malaysia choosing to take selfie with special facial expression. Why they take selfie with facial expression. My motive is to know the definition of each special facial expression that they try to show and exposes to social media.
The participant involve are among BA German in UPM who take a selfie with special facial expression. This project is among BA student in UPM. However, I believe there are a lot of students who are taking selfie with special facial expression in UPM.
1.2 Objective
• To identify the mostly used facial expression like “duck face”, “sparrow face”, cute face”, “big eye” by the BA German students when taking selfie.
• To identify factors those contribute to the used of these expression among BA German students in University Putra Malaysia
• To find and the reason of meaning of these expressions like “duck face”, “Sparrow face”, “cute face”, and “big eye” for them.
1.3 Research questions
My focus for this project based on BA German student in FBMK, UPM as participants. I try to find out participant based on their poses facial expressions like “duck face”, “sparrow face”, “cute face”, and “big eye” in social Media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I will take 20 students from Foreign Department BA German student in FBMK, UPM. They are from first year until final year student. 10 open questioners will be given to participant. All participants should answer the entire question given. Participant is choosing among the students who like to take selfie.
The type of data collected to be analyzed in this research is written answers as part of their personal documents, produced by BA German students. In this writing, personal document is any written record created by the subject that concerned his or her experiences, comprises of documents produced by students in writing as part of their learning process to describe their experience and articulate their opinions.
1.4 Significance of study
The project is important to me because I can know about the various kind of student’s expression while taking selfie. Moreover, I can identify the meaning of their facial expression and what people are looking for to make a better expression that suits for their face. Through this project, I can know about the relationship link between their expression and people feeling. Beside that I can learn to identify their identity through their facial expression such as “duck face”, sparrow face”, “cute face”, and “big eye” when people taking selfie and poses to social medias like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I also can know the particular new types of facial expression through selfie. From this project, people can know new types of facial expression through selfie and know the reason behind facial expression that they try to present. It is interesting for me to understand behind these facial expressions when people taking selfie. Besides that, I can know what can influence people to do this facial expression. It could be trend, culture or social thing. I will explore it more detail.
1.5 Limitation of study
This project is restricting to the student of University Putra Malaysia. I choose BA German students in UPM. Mostly my participants are always taking selfie with facial expression. My participants are from Faculty Bahasa Modern and Communication (FBMK) student.
1.6 Definition of terms
I cannot find any academic research about the term of special facial expression like ‘duck face’, ‘cute face’ sparrow face’ and ‘big eye’ but I believe that the term is from slang of internet. All of people in media social call the term of special facial expression that because of phenomena and try to compare their facial expression with something.
Sparrow face
Based on Urban Dictionary, 2013, “Sparrow face is the face that has replaced duck face in selfies. It is often found on Instagram and Facebook pictures posted by girls. It is achieved by opening one’s eyes are far you can and slightly puckering your lips, in order to look like a sparrow”. In Japanese, “duck lips” are called “ahiru-guchi” or truly “duck mouth”. In 2013, Twitter and Japan’s greatest online gathering have been humming over the most recent forced expression, which is called “chun-gao” in Japanese. “Chun” refers to “chun”, which is Japanese for “tweet” or “cheep”. “Gao” means “face.” So, truly it’s “Twitter Face.”
Based on website Kotaku.com (2013), Asian internet culture from Japan, Korea and China as clarified on Japanese morning TV when you make this outward appearance, you open your eyes as wide as could reasonably be expected, and after that you make your mouth like a twittering sparrow. The sparrow bit is critical, which is the reason I’m deciphering this appearance as “Sparrow Face.” Sparrow Face is an Internet slang term used to portray an outward look made by marginally separating one’s lips with eyes completely open. Since its introductory look on the Japanese web in February 2013, the Sparrow Face has get to be known as a popular different option for Duck Face in selfie photography.
Duck face
According Oxford dictionary December 4, 2014 “duck face is a term used to descibe the face made if you push your lips together in a combination of a pout and a pucker, giving the impression you have larger cheekbones and bigger lips”. The duck face selfie is the best known variety of selfie. It is in no way, shape or form the most well-known variety, yet before the selfie, the duck face wasn’t effortlessly identifiable. When selfies got to be popular, we understood that when individuals thought they were making themselves look more like models, they were really making themselves look like ducks. In spite of the fact that the duck face selfie looks ludicrous, it really originates from an exceptionally sensible spot. The most attractive among us, displays and performers, have pouty lips. Shy of collagen inserts, there is no real way to make your lips look poutier. Thus, we strain our lips to imitate the puffy lipped wonders of stage and screen. Subsequently, the duck face selfie.
Cute face
According urban dictionary, 2006, “cute face is someone whose face is incredibly cute and normally you want to squeeze them for their cuteness or have slightly rough sex with them because they deserve a little pain for their irresistible cuteness”. They try to pose cute face to make sure their expression cute like baby face.
Big eyes
I cannot able to find any term that describe people who prefer to make their eyes wider during selfie time. Normally, they will raise their chin up and the same time they also will their eyes wider. At the same time, they also will use contact lens in order to give bigger eyes illusion onto the picture. Maybe they try to follow their favorite celebrity that post like that. Most of them using enlarge eyes as influenced by Korean artists. This is because Malaysians influenced by culture K-pop coming from Korea. Korean artists have mostly women and big round eyes. Their faces are beautiful and sexy while doing selfie with big eyes.
Chapter 2
2.0 Literature review
Selfie, according to Oxford Dictionaries that selected this word as the word of the year in 2013, is a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website. In justifying its choice, Oxford Dictionaries editors reveal that the frequency of the word selfie in the English language has significantly increased by 17,000% since 2012, hence it is worthy for such title. Based on Oxford Dictionaries, since November 19, 2013 when announced selfie as “the international Word of the Year”
Saltzberg and Chrisler (1997) believe that beauty ‘cannot be quantified or objectively measured; it is the result of the judgment of others’ (p. 135). Yet, studying and understanding such judgments allow for the insight into ideal beauty in American society and how exposure to US media may influence others’ perceptions and beliefs about what is considered attractive.
According Wortham, Jenna. “My Selfie, Myself.” The New York Times, October 19, 2013. Selfies have been called “a symptom of social media-driven narcissism.
Rawlings, Kandice. “Selfies and the History of Self-Portrait Photography.” Oxford University Press Blog, November 21, 2013 point out a “new way not only of representing ourselves to others, but of communicating with one another through images”. Based on this I believe that people use selfie as an image to communicate with others. It makes me excited to explore about that. It is related to trend nowadays when people more choosing to present through selfie than communicated face to face. Just want to show their feeling by facial expressions and other people can guess and knew.
Mark R. Leary, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University and author of The Curse of the Self: Self-Awareness, Egotism, and the Quality of Human Life (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) and editor of Interpersonal Rejection has pointed out that “by posting selfies, people can keep themselves in other people’s minds. In addition, like all photographs that are posted online, selfies are used to convey a particular impression of one. Through the clothes one wears, one’s expression, staging of the physical setting and the style of the photo, people can convey a particular public image of themselves, presumably one that they think will garner social rewards.”
A clinical psychologist and research fellow at UCLA, as tweens and teens try to form their identity, selfies serve as a way to test how they look and therefore feel, in certain outfits, make-up, poses and places because they live in a digital world, self-portraits provide a way of participating and affiliating with that world. In an interview with Rebecca Brown who makes selfies, it is like a visual diary to look back and see what she looked like at a particular time, on in other words, selfie allows her to expose her identity in digital form. This is according to Dr. Andrea Latemendi, USA Today (2013) ‘What Did Narcissus Say to Instagram? Selfie Time!
Selfie allows us to see images of real people – with beautiful diversity. Bodies of different shapes and sizes, with diverse skin tones and complexions, without smiles always plastered to their faces. Although flawless images still pervade Western media, the impact of the imperfect images that make their way onto social media feed should not be overlooked. This is according Chelune, G.J. (1987) “The Neuropsychological Perspective of Interpersonal Communication” in Derlega, V.J. & Berg, J.H. (eds) Self-Disclosure: Theory, Research, and Therapy New York: Plenum Press.
Based on Fausing, B. (2013) Become An Image: On Selfie, Visuality and The Visual Turn in Social Media Conference Paper University of Copenhage. The emphasis is not on creating a permanent projection of ‘who we are’, selfie is more about informal and free representation of ‘what’s going on’ – giving it a more raw and less perfect level of authenticity. The focus on faces in selfie is because faces are presence and confirmation, physically and intellectually. Based on previous research it can be used as for my guidelines to accomplish my project
Based on Sugden, Molly. “Selfie.” Urban Dictionary. 23 May 2014. UrbanDictionary.com. One Urban Dictionary definition of the term selfie says, “A symptom of the current narcissistic epidemic whereby the subject takes a filtered, highly polished (often completely over-exposed) photograph of themselves and uploads it to Instagram, Facebook, or some other social media outlet. It’s often motivated by a need for adulation, attention, or validation…” (Urban Dictionary). Most of society mocks the selfie concept, yet continues to partake in it because it has become such a popular widespread norm. It is not uncommon to pass by several people taking selfies on their phones each day; in fact, it has become so normal that it almost seems uncommon to not pass by any selfie takers throughout the entire day.
Based on Urban Dictionary, 2013 Sparrow face is the face that has replaced duck face in selfies. It is often found on Instagram and Facebook pictures posted by girls. It is achieved by opening one’s eyes are far you can and slightly puckering your lips, in order to look like a sparrow.
According urban dictionary, 2006 “cute face is someone whose face is incredibly cute and normally you want to squeeze them for their cuteness or have slightly rough sex with them because they deserve a little pain for their irresistible cuteness”.
CHAPTER 3 Methodology
3.0 Design of study
This project has used the method of questionnaire survey to investigate the reasons of meaning of these special facial expressions. In addition, the interview method was also used in this project. There are two methods used to complete this project.
I will focus on the answers obtained from participants are selected through questionnaires and individual interviews. I believe the participant will provide cooperation and information have a higher level of reliability because of the time given very rational. Participant is given the time to think before answering questions.
3.1 Subject of study
3.1.1 Population
Data used in this project is selected from a group of second, third and fourth years of German language student studying in UPM. This is suitable because among them take a selfie with facial expressions. Therefore, they had a basic knowledge about selfie and facial expression. They also alert with social media phenomena.
In order to select the participant for this project, a simple questionnaire are used that requested students to report on their knowledge about selfie. 20 participants were initially selected for this study. There were 15 female and 5 males. It involved 3 big races in Malaysia-Muslim, Chinese and India participants.
3.1.2 Sample
I will choose the answer by 20 participants. The selected answer is based on accurate and convenient to the objectives I want to achieve. The selection will be made randomly. The answers are chosen among male and female students.
3.2 Research Method
This project had a cross sectional quantitative and qualitative research design, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data by answering questionnaire that required students for free writing. Therefore, based on the data it shows about the perception of the student and their reason about take a selfie with special facial expression.
A basic general knowledge question will be given to test the knowledge of the students. General question for student are about themselves and their knowledge of selfie. It also shows how much of the students know about selfie and facial expression.
Collecting data by using questionnaire method is suitable because participants have more time to consider the answer. The participants will reflect back on themselves while answering the questionnaire. They are using English language to complete the questionnaire.
Collecting data by using recording or interview also a good way because I can know my participants very well. I can ask them a lot of questions so that the objectives are achieved. They can answer questions with ease because this interview will be conducted in comfortable situation. This interview allows me face to face with participant. Through this interview I can clearly see their reaction. They are using English during interview. Participants were assured that there were no right or wrong answer to any of the questions and we asked that they speak freely about their belief and opinions. I will ask permission from the participant to record all information during the interview and the information will be used.
3.3 Location of study
I have chosen the place to do this research is located at University Putra Malaysia (UPM) Serdang, Selangor. In UPM there are some faculties including the Faculty of modern languages & communication and is majoring in foreign languages (German).
3.4 Research questions
The project set up to investigate the reason of meaning of these particular facial expressions and what they know about the meaning of ‘duck face’, ‘sparrow face’, ‘cute face’ and ‘big eye’ as facial expression that expressed by BA German students in UPM to take selfie. It is also to identify the mostly used facial expression like ‘duck face’, ‘sparrow face’, ‘cute face’ and ‘big eye’ by the BA German students when taking selfie.
The open answer questionnaire consisted of 28 questions. Students are required to answer the following questions:
For this project, a method of open questionnaire is used to collect data. The reason I using this method because large amounts of information can be collected in short time and the feedback can be collected immediately from the participants. Besides that, participants have enough of time to thinking and reflect on themselves.
In conclusion, the selfie phenomena is more complex than it first appears and it is not necessarily driven by self-absorption and self-love, or representative of a narcissistic turn in contemporary popular culture. The impulse to be creative an original when connect with other in a variety of ways and to share experiences in real time.
Photography is about communication, which serves to maintain contact and relationship with others. Moreover, selfies are a conditions of active online participation. They are shared networked and connected visual reflections of everyday life. Those reflections help to maintain and expand social connections as selfies are shared and re-shared. It is not unusual to pass by several people taking selfies on their phones each day in fact, it has become so normal that it almost seems unusual to not pass by any selfie takers throughout the entire day.
From this project, people can know new types of facial expression through selfie and know the reason behind facial expression that they try to present. Any student who uses facial expression is because they feel like trying something new. This is because the facial expression such as duck face, sparrow face, cute face, and big eyes is a phenomena in the world of selfies. Anyone who want to try to see their own face is influences to take selfie.
Through this research, I found that some of them are doing this kind of facial expression is because several factors such as the desire to be popular in the social, need attention from their followers and just for fun.
They want to be popular because they think that with the extreme facial expression such as duck face, cute face, sparrow face and big eyes could make them popular with pleasure. This is because social media is a medium which can deliver fast information rather than other media such as newspaper. Without spending a great need someone be able to become popular like an artist.
Another factor that determines one to take selfie is to create an attention. They build the attention of the public or their followers in the social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They can say their own faces by imitating the facial expression of extreme interest to be able to see the differentiation in them self. Students also agreed to upload is to attract attention of many people. The proof that show that students are more than 100 pictures like compared to normal without the extreme expression. Based on questionnaire that had been received the student has said that “when I post selfie with facial expression like duck face many kind of comment and more than 100 likes from followers”. Through these feedback, the student also has received positive comments from their followers to make sure they continue to upload their picture in social media.
Facial expression is so unique for such a study and revealed to the public. Everyone has their own reasons for their art-loading in social media. There are various reason were interesting it is explored in more detail. Everyone has their own perception toward selfie. They strongly agree that there is no right or wrong in the world of selfie.
Recommendations for the study is I would suggest to the university to expand and continue this study on facial expression. This is because this study is very interesting and unusual. Perhaps many people out there who still do not know about facial expression through selfie. By expanding research in selfie can enlarge their insight about the different kind of facial expression that is made during taking selfie. Some previous studies is about selfie in general. There are still has no specific study on the facial expression of wide range of people in the world. The researcher who want to continue this research about selfie can explore the perception of different people in different countries. It make the research more interesting and useful to others.
This study has given me exposure toward opinion of students on the facial expression during selfie. There are variety of facial expression that I have learned through the respondent and the reason behind their facial expression. This study is very challenging and gives me a lot of exposure like how I want to greet people, learn to attract them to answer the questions that would be asked, learn to communicate with students during interview section and how to manage the time available to finish this research project within the time period.
Meanwhile, there are also weakness that I have observed through this research that has been conducted I have only a short time to complete my research project in a time given. It is because I am unable to conduct studies with more extensive and detailed. Constraints limiting the time available for this study. In addition, sometimes the respondent do not want to cooperate very well because they are worried that their identity be disclosed and they are embarrassed to admit that they actually belong to the group of selfie using different kind of facial expression.