Amanda's Blog

This is a question that has been discussed thoroughly in my ASTU class. We examined the different forms of genre and what elements are required for something to be considered a genre. From these class discussions, I now understand that a genre is made up of a situation and form. In other words, the purpose, audience and occasion, in addition with a social context creates a genre.

Although I developed a clear understanding of genres, I still could not fully comprehend how many different genres we encounter on a day-to-day basis. For instance, after reading a scholarly essay, written by Kate Douglas, about the young generation taking selfies at trauma memorial sites I came to two realizations. Firstly, selfies which are usually frowned upon by older generations have become accepted into culture and act as a tool that helps us with self expression, engagement, and memory. Secondly, the way people respond to similar events differs. This may be due to different ages, cultural backgrounds, personal experiences, etc. This relates to my first realization as the variables listed above affect the way we, as individuals, engage with different cultures, remember certain events, express our feelings and share our experiences.

Prior to reading this scholarly essay, I understood a selfie as simply capturing a photograph of yourself, most of the time with a background of significance, so that people remember where they went and what they did at a at a certain point in time. One key variable that stood out to me was cultural backgrounds and how that affects the way an individual responds to an event. Being half Thai and half Canadian, I witness many contrasting behaviours and social norms. In Thailand, taking selfies, editing them immensely, and posting them on social media platforms (mostly Facebook, Instagram and Line) is an extremely common ‘social norm’, almost as if your audience expects you to post photographs and videos of where you went and what you did during your day. Also, because of how popular taking selfies are in Thailand, memorial sites almost encourage visitors to continue these practices because this could be a way of promoting tourism for the memorial sites. This is what Douglas refers to as ‘dark tourism’. In contrast, I have noticed that people in Canada who take selfies at memorial sites mostly do it for personal purposes, to remember the experience they had when they visited a memorial site.

After analyzing the scholarly essay written by Kate Douglas, and thinking profoundly about the themes and issues raised, I have come to the revelation that the modern social media phenomenon of selfies has more motivation behind it than what we would assume at first glance. When one takes a selfie, we unconsciously develop an emotional attachment to not just the location, but to the experience as well. Thus a combination of our cultural background and emotional attachment may provoke vivid memories of the circumstances the selfie was taken in.