Semiótica de la selfie

This article is written in the first person, but maintains that, in order to understand the meaning of a selfie, it is necessary to articulate different levels of analysis. First, we must differentiate between the meaning of the practice of taking selfies and the meaning of selfies themselves as images. In addition, we must consider that there are selfies whose nature is hidden in the communication of these images (crypto-selfies), as well as there are images that circulate as selfies but that are actually not such from the point of view of their empirical production (pseudo-selfies). There are, then, crypto-selfies, pseudo-selfies, and even meta-selfies, that is, representations of social contexts in which selfies are taken (the latter subgenre, as we will see, is widely used by politicians). The practice of taking selfies and the images it produces give rise to meanings that can be distributed according to the famous hermeneutical tripartition formulated by Umberto Eco. In selfies there is an intentio auctoris, that is, a meaning that the subject wants to express in a more or less conscious manner through this photographic format and its content; then there is an intentio lectoris, that is, the meaning that emerges from a selfie or a set of selfies when an audience observes and interprets them; but there is also an intentio operis of the selfie, that is, a meaning that this practice, its format, and the texts it produces implicitly entails within the framework of the history of culture and especially in the structure of the current semiosphere.