Keywords

Everyday photographs are more than just images. They have always been about connection, and in digital social networks, the ease and visibility of photographic connections have increased. Connections include the relationships we experience as individuals and the connections we identify in the sharing and practice of networked photography. Our connection with and through photographs was identified long before the advent of digitally networked photography. In 1980, Roland Barthes wrote, “A sort of umbilical cord links the body of the photographed thing to my gaze: light, though impalpable, is here a carnal medium, a skin I share with anyone who has been photographed” (Barthes, 1980/2010, p. 81). By directly referencing parts of the body, Barthes describes photography as an embodied experience connecting the subject and the viewer. This description simultaneously identifies meaning and meaning-making in the everyday visual practice of photography.

As an embodied practice, touch, in its most superficial everyday understanding, similarly deals with the connection and disconnection of bounded entities. This chapter reviews critical literature that signals digitally networked visual practices – specifically selfies and photo-based memes – as concepts of touch and touching. These forms of touching include connections, networked social relationships and networked photographic practices.

To approach the question of “what are the visual social relationships of selfies and memes?”, it is important to first know how scholars have already described and explored these relationships. After reviewing the literature for selfies and memes separately, and then comparing the two bodies of literature, I argue that although networked photographic practices have not yet been explicitly and deeply examined as forms of Touch, touch and touching have formed part of the academic discussions grappling with ways to describe visual social relationships of selfies and memes. The vast literature considering aspects of touch in this context highlights how touch acts as a central aspect of visual relationships. Furthermore, the expanse of the literature flags the need for urgent examination to explicitly understand networked visual practices as forms of Touch.

Examining Literature on Selfies and Memes as Visual Relationships

Selfies

Selfies differ from traditional photography because they are based in digitally networked socialities. Selfies can be defined as objects with three properties: they are (1) photographic, (2) self-representational and (3) digitally networked (meaning taken with a smart device and uploaded to social media) (Tiidenberg, 2018). Of course, people have used photographs for self-representation before and beyond the advent of selfies, so the main property of selfies that has evolved beyond traditional photography is the digital network and the reliance on a smart device. Although this change might seem quite simple, it has caused quite a commotion among scholars about how we might describe visual communication and what it involves.

One of the issues is that photography is essentially a practice of looking, and cultural and social relationships of looking include relationships of power. These relationships are most commonly understood in visual cultures by referring to the work of Laura Mulvey and John Berger. Laura Mulvey (1989) described how power relationships of looking work by drawing on the example of Hollywood cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. In her work, she argues that viewers are limited to experiences of a heterosexual male gaze, where women on screen are limited to performing the object of this desire. In this way, women are coded as being looked at, and male viewers are awarded agency as the bearer of the look. This is something John Berger described when analysing traditional art practice as “men act, women appear” (Berger, 2008, p. 47). Although these concepts of the gaze and power are limited to a gender binary, they remain valuable in pointing out that there is an agency in actively controlling how one is represented and visible. Such agency (or lack thereof) is a form of sociocultural representation and identification that shapes how we connect with others and understand ourselves.

The cultural and social power relationships of looking have (to some extent) been disrupted by selfies. Specifically, the disruption arises from selfies being self-representational and digitally networked. Compared to photographic self-representation of the past, the act of taking a selfie credits more agency to the person in the photograph as they are also the photographer. Using a reflective screen or mirror shot allows the photographer to view and shoot themselves at the same time, rather than being subject to an external photographer’s gaze (Fig. 2.1). As well as the agency in self-representation, there is also agency attributed to the sharing of selfies, because the selfie producer initially chooses to share how they want to be represented. In this way, traditional power relationships are disrupted because, unlike traditional photography practice, visual depictions are no longer limited to a particular gaze. Furthermore, the subject is no longer passive in the production and distribution of their image because the selfie producer is actively involved in the initial presentation and sharing.

Fig. 2.1
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Cat taking a selfie. A visual representation of the differences in spaces and relationships of looking between traditional photographic practice and selfie production. (Illustration created and owned by author)

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However, these visual relationships are best understood as a struggle because the agency is not absolute. One example is that of young women performing selfies. When selfies first became possible, media reports and online comments were primarily negative, with claims of immorality and narcissism (Andreallo, 2017; Burns, 2015). Such criticisms, outrage and control of the female body in public space have a long European history dating back to the nineteenth century, when it was considered immoral for women to be visible in public spaces and streets (Andreallo, 2017; Kessler, 2006). The focus on selfies as problematic for specific groups of people presents an observation of socially and culturally constructed power relationships. So, in the case of young women, there is a struggle between women practising agency in representing themselves in public space and the criticism that aims to maintain control of female bodies. A struggle also arises from the ways people lose their agency when images of themselves that they share publicly are used beyond their original intent.

Focusing on how agency of selfies and agency in digital networks is both enabled and constrained, Theresa Senft (2015; Senft & Baym, 2015) uses the descriptive terms “the grab” and “the skin of the selfie”. Senft and Nancy Baym (2015) explicitly describe the grab, a physical action, as a signifying descriptor of the gaze in digitally networked contexts. They write, “to grab signifies multiple acts: to touch, to seize for a moment, to capture attention, and to leave open to interpretation (as in the saying, ‘up for grabs’), raising questions of agency, permission, and power” (Senft & Baym, 2015, p. 1598). Senft and Baym’s piece “What does the selfie say?” (Senft & Baym, 2015) is an introduction to the idea of the grab that is explored in more detail by Senft in “The skin of the selfie” (Senft, 2015). Here she explains that selfies can be considered through the concept of skin, grabbing and being grabbed, where the visual content is an epidermis (Senft, 2015, p. 6). The “selfie skin” and “the grab” highlight the complexity of social relationships of looking and the constant struggle over agency.

Because skin and grabbing are located in the concept of the body, considering them as descriptors of selfies identifies how selfies are at once an embodied and active, and meaning-making, practice. Skin is a living organ and penetrable encasement of the human body that not only contains but is also associated with sensitivity and identification. As the encasing of the body, skin presents the boundary of an entity that performs the action of touch during a close encounter with another (where no space remains). In this way, the concept of skin as a signifying descriptor of selfies points to concepts of connection and touch through boundaries, the body and bodies.

The concept of grabbing is an action also located in the body, thus suggesting embodiment as well as an action that involves types of touching. The grab (Senft & Baym, 2015) explicitly draws on a physical, corporeal, gestural act that we can imagine or observe in everyday practices. For example, you might grab a coffee on the way into the office or grab a friend’s sleeve to draw their attention to something. Grabbing actions also have social and cultural meanings specific to the contexts, spaces and bodies involved.

However, the concept of “the grab” has some limitations. Placing “the” in front of “grab” specifies importance and uniqueness. It also suggests a particular event or specific grab rather than grabbing in multiple contexts with a multiplicity of meanings. Furthermore, a concept of “the grab” might more often be considered as a noun than a verb or adjective, thus suggesting the grab is not an active and interactive practice. In the context of visual connections, the grab specifies a one-way action, failing to identify how visual practices can also be active and interactive. Prior to networked visual relationships, Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen (2020) identified how the gaze of the person depicted in an image is active. For example, direct eye contact of the person in an image can demand engagement with the viewer, and looking away from the viewer actively invites the viewer to look upon the person represented.

Although the term “the grab” appears limited in some ways, Senft makes explicit that it was intended to consider more than an emphasised initial grab, and in her piece “The skin of the selfie”, Senft describes in detail the complexity in relationships of grabbing in networked circulation. Despite its limitations, the concept of the grab is essential to academic literature and early discussions of networked visual practices that examine visual social relationships. Most importantly, a grab is a form of touch and connection that, as a signifier, begins to locate a practice of touch in digital networks as culturally significant and meaningful.

Kinaesthesis is another concept of touch that has been employed to describe visual social relationships of selfies. Paul Frosh (2015, 2018) uses the term “kinesthetic sociability” to describe selfies as embodied gestures and a type of movement, response and interaction beyond traditional visual concepts of photographic analysis. He writes, “The selfie is a preeminent conductor of embodied social energy because it is a kinesthetic image: it is a product of kinetic bodily movement; it gives aesthetic, visible form to that movement in images; and it is inscribed in the circulation of kinetic and responsive social energy among users of movement-based digital technologies” (Frosh, 2015, p. 1623). By naming selfies an “embodied social energy”, the selfie as a visual relationship is located in concepts of embodiment, similar to the theories of “selfie skin” and “the grab”. Based on embodied practice, Frosh then explains this relationship as a type of movement, where the body actively participates as muscular movements and associations within the interactive, networked social relationship. The body is at once and independently the body of self, an image with a relationship of connection (as touch), and the body of networked bodies that are in connection through visual interactive movements or gestures. In this way, kinaesthesis describes the connection or touching of images, self and others as active and living social interactions and relationships.

Within the concept of kinaesthetic sociability, the idea of selfies as embodied recognises how they are a constitutional part of the self, and how we interact in a larger, digitally networked body or corporeality in digital social media contexts. Selfies are aspects of how we perform our identity and, in that way, are linked directly to the self. We might even recognise a visual representation of this linking of the selfie to self when the extended arm is included in the frame of a selfie: the outreached arm holding the mobile device in the action of performing the selfie physically gestures touch to the viewer of the image. The person in the image appears to be physically reaching out to touch or embrace the viewer, gesturing a physically intimate connection and reducing the space between the selfie subject and the viewer.

As well as explaining networked visual social relationships, the term kinaesthesis can also be extended to understand a variety of other networked relationships. However, the way Frosh uses the term to describe touch in visual practice without explicit mention of tactility is unique. For example, when we talk about kinaesthetic learning practices, they involve learning through tactility as well as active performance. Furthermore, phenomenologist Jennifer Barker (2009) writes about “the tactile eye” to express how cinematic experience involves more than vision and can be understood as sensorily embodied. Kinaesthetic sociability can also suggest tactility in this way. However, in networked social relationships, kinaesthesis is located in active tactile interactions and explicitly related to the body as a touching entity, where the self can be touched and bodies actively interact, connect and relate as part of networked embodied practice.

So far in this chapter, I have discussed the concept of selfies as touch through the most straightforward understanding of touch – the connection at the points where two entities become so close that no space remains between them. However, connection is not the only aspect of touch to be considered; disconnection, the boundaries of the bodies (or entities) and the spaces involved are also central to the concept. Although describing photographic relationships as a skin (Barthes, 1980/2010; Senft, 2015) suggests intimate relationships of touch, it also identifies concepts of boundaries, because the skin encasing the human body is the boundary through which touching others physically occurs. Boundaries of self and boundaries in our interactions are a part of our everyday relationships. For example, in a conversation, the topic works as a type of boundary. We also practise boundaries of self in how we perform in different social contexts where, for example, our work profile image is different to our family social media account. These boundaries are essential to how we connect and interact.

Boundaries in the relationships of touch of selfies involve what is included, and what is excluded or cut. When a photograph is taken, people perform in a certain manner to pose for the image. We might try to crop out any unsavoury aspects of the image or things we do not want to be included for a multitude of reasons. We might also use filters, or retouch the image or crop it after it is shot. Katie Warfield (2016) has started to consider these concepts as the boundaries of self-performance through selfies. Warfield writes about “cuts”, identifying that what is cut or excluded from a shared selfie is also an essential aspect of the performance of the selfie. Examining what is cut or excluded from an image, platform or a conversation can reveal how selfies both enable and constrain the presentation of self. The concept of cuts or what is excluded in visually networked practices is an essential aspect of Touch because what is excluded defines what is not acceptable to be made socially visible. In this way, cuts identify the boundaries and boundary-making in the performance of self. Touch then is about what is excluded and the points of disconnection as much as it is about connection and what is included. What is made visible is made significant by what is made invisible, and within these connections and disconnections of visibility constitute relationships of Touch.

Photo-Based Memes

Just as selfie scholars have recognised an evolution of photographic communication through selfies, meme scholars have claimed an evolution of memetic communication in digital contexts. Visual culture scholars focusing on memes have also extended traditional concepts of visual communication and photography towards recognising relationships of touch in discussions of relationships of connection.

As in the cultural research on selfies, the central aspect of the evolution of memes from traditional practices is in how they are digitally networked (specifically their circulation and interaction). Limor Shifman (2014a) defines memes as “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics, (b) created with the awareness of each other, (c) circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the internet by many users” (Shifman, 2014b, p. 41). Like the definition of selfies earlier in the chapter, memes here are defined as evolving from traditional models because of the context of digital networks. Whereas selfies are defined as “an object” and as self-representational, memes are located as “a group” (Milner, 2012, 2018; Shifman, 2014a, 2014b), and self-representation has mainly been considered as a focal aspect beyond belonging to and identifying with groups of people (Gal et al., 2016).

Memes have a long pre-internet history as critical cultural interactions. One example of a meme that existed before the internet (and is still going!) is “Kilroy was here”, which you may have noticed as graffiti in public spaces, usually accompanied by a face with a big nose peeking over a wall (Fig. 2.2). This meme was something I first noticed in the 1980s on my older sister’s pencil case and etched into school desks. I also remember writing it on the steamy car windows on cold mornings and doodling it in books. The origins of Kilroy are still a matter of debate, but there are objects still around from the Second World War, such as buttons, pins and small figures of pregnant women, that include the words “Kilroy was here”. A common consensus among historians is that the meme can be traced back to shipyards in the Second World War, where shipyard inspector James Kilroy marked inspected sections of the ship with those words (Gilmore, 2012). Soldiers noticing the markings extensively throughout the ships began to inscribe the slogan on a variety of surfaces. As the ships and soldiers travelled, the meme also travelled and extended to urban graffiti. Of course, I had no idea of this history when I was four years old, scribbling on things in the 1980s. The meme continued to spread, evolving in meaning over time. The way it spread and evolved relied on people practising imitation.

Fig. 2.2
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Image of Kilroy—one of the oldest and most well-known memes

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The word “meme” was introduced by Richard Dawkins (1989) in his book The Selfish Gene. It is derived from the Greek “mimema” to indicate “something that is imitated”, and Dawkins decided it should rhyme with gene. In the simplest terms, internet memes can be described as a practice of imitation, acting essentially as a unit of cultural transmission (Shifman, 2013). Cultural transmission and imitation occur through interactions and relationships involving the ways we connect or touch each other. If we locate photography as a practice of looking (as I have done earlier in this chapter), and if we include photo-based memes in that, we can consider practices of looking and ideas of imitation as units of cultural transmission.

However, since Dawkins’ introduction of the word “meme”, the ambiguity of its definition has given rise to much debate between biological and cultural scholars, given that examples include ideas (God), texts (nursery rhymes and jokes) and practices (Christian rituals). Shifman’s (2014b) definition of memes focuses on the complexity of “what memes are”. The aspects of awareness of each other, sharing commonality, circulating, imitating and transforming are all practices of connection or Touch because they include connections through common identifications and ideals. These social connections through which Touch is practised all form a part of what Shifman calls “hyper-mimetic logic” (Shifman, 2012, 2013), which recognises memes as part of our embodied everyday social relationships.

To explore how memes gesture as embodied everyday social relationships, Shifman (2014a, 2014b) introduces the terms “prospective photography” and “hyper-signification”, which explicitly deal with signification or meaningful forms of connection. These terms consider how people form connections through memes and define memes as connections or relationships of touch. We can therefore say that Shifman identifies how Touch signifies and is culturally meaningful, both in our relationships with photography and in relationships with each other.

Prospective photography essentially describes the way photos for meme creation are perceived as raw material for future image creation. When photos are perceived as raw material, photo-based memes are understood as gestures to participants encouraging creative contributions. This gesture calls out to the participant by touching them or being meaningful to them in such a way that they decide to participate.

The term “hyper-signification” was first used to describe a movement in the advertising industry where the glamour, construction or set-up of the photographic representation was exposed in the advertisement. The code of advertising itself was no longer concealed but was turned into a sign (Goldman & Papson, 1996). Hyper-signification essentially deals with the way people participate with memes.

Central to hyper-mimetic logic and the concepts of prospective photography and hyper-signification is an examination of how people gesture with and through photo-based memes as social relationships. Many meme interactions, creations and connections involve participants playing with the authenticity of social and cultural ideas of photographic truth. Exposing the façade or codes of social practices (i.e. hyper-signification) acts as an essential element of the connection and how it touches people. This practice is most often employed in meme genres through the use of a joke.

The joke (which I will discuss further in Chap. 4) is a communicative tool that allows people to cross social boundaries and expose the facades of social performance. The way we use media such as photography supports cultural beliefs and social structures. For example, what we choose to exclude, edit and include in an image (often unconsciously) displays social and cultural ideals by what we see and make visible or invisible. Culturally the photograph continues to be used as a form of proof even though we know that it can be easily edited. This knowledge is key to understanding the joke because it is the cultural idea of photography as proof that is signified in “reaction photoshop” and “stock character Macro” meme genres. Similarly, the cultural knowledge of the joke as posed and constructed is part of the fun of “photo fad” memes.

One example of a reaction photoshop meme is “disaster girl”, in which an image of a smiling girl is superimposed onto different disaster settings of the meme creator’s desire. The image is funny mainly because a young girl is presented as causing great disasters, but central to the practice is a play with the truthfulness of the photographic image as a form of evidence or truth. Because the image is heavily manipulated, one of the ways this meme works is as a type of hyper-signification. Here photography is simultaneously presented as fact and heavily manipulated, and understanding of this is a key aspect of where the joke is produced.

The stock character macros genre, which includes memes like “confession bear” and “Asian dad”, is overt construction of social and cultural stereotypes (Shifman, 2014b). Such constructions are produced by presenting stock images with added text that locates the social and cultural stereotypes associated with the image.

Photo fads include memes that tend to focus on the pose and performance of the pose (Shifman, 2014b). They include memes like planking, in which the participant must perform a plank pose, or hair flick selfies, in which the participant flicks their hair in a body of water, splashing water in a pattern in the sky. Photo fad memes reference social and cultural ideals of posing and performing for everyday photographs – for example, the way people perform in front of the camera to create culturally coded intimacy or attractiveness, such as smiling a certain way, tilting one’s head, leaning forward or turning one’s hips on an angle to the camera. Photo fads make explicit the performance involved in photography.

Another way to consider the connections and relationships of memes as Touch is as practices of reappropriation, resonance, collectivism, spread and multimodality. Ryan Milner (2012, 2018) has identified these aspects of memes as the five fundamentals of memetic social relationships, cultural connection and engagement. These five fundamentals can also be acknowledged as practices of Touch and indicative of the complexity of the degrees of Touch in social relationships of memes.

Reappropriation identifies how reuse and appropriation are essential to meme creation and conversations. We can consider reappropriation as a form of connection and practice of Touch using the example of the stock character macro and photo fad genres I mentioned earlier. First, the stock character or photo fad image reaches out to an image from the past and connects it to present contexts and conversations. People then connect to each other through the further reappropriation or performance of the image when participants attach new aspects to the template of the meme.

Resonance recognises the ways memes carry personal meaning and importance beyond the broader connective conversation. Resonance explicitly identifies the complexity of connection in embodied networked practices. In the earlier section on selfies, I identified how this embodied networked self includes image, body and bodies through concepts of kinaesthesis, skin and umbilical cord. Resonance points towards the complexity of connections, including degrees of Touch in different circumstances.

This broader conversation comes together in the fundamental of collectivism. Collectivism essentially deals with groups and boundaries of meme conversations, which deserve further scholarly consideration as to what is included and excluded and how these boundaries are defined in meme visual conversations.

The aspect of spread deals with the circulation of memes as “spreadable media” (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 3), where people share content for their own purposes. Spread relies on the interactive practices and association of the last three fundamentals (reappropriation, resonance and collectivism), thus relying on connections and Touch. The definition of spread highlights that people share for their own reasons. These personal reasons depend on how the images touch us personally and the degrees of touch and connection to images in shared relationships. Spread therefore requires closer scholarly investigation into the connection and meaning-making that Touch can provide.

Understanding the practices of reappropriation, resonance, collectivism and spread as located in the multimodality of media is also essential to meme practice and interaction. Multimodality and visual grammar (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2020) are essential concepts that have been influential across many disciplines. These concepts recognise that meaning is never produced through a singular mode. Milner recognises the fundamentals of memes as multimodal to highlight that meaning in digital contexts is conveyed by more than images alone, for example, by hyperlinks, videos, text and comments. He writes, “Although visuals abound, thinking in terms of a ‘visual internet’ is a limiting paradigm, since more than only text and image exist in multimodal media” (Milner, 2018, p. 25). Multimodality essentially identifies many modes of communication that interplay simultaneously to make social and cultural meaning. In stock character memes, for example, participants add text to stock images to change the meaning. The meaning-making in this practice includes combinations and relationships of the modes of written text and image. The image without the text or with another contributed media produces different meanings, which serves to recontextualise the image.

Milner’s definition of memes as multimodal media is vital because it recognises that the active engagement of participants in the creation and sharing of memes includes multimodal relationships. Furthermore, multimodality contextualises the fundamentals identified in meme relationships as practices that are not limited to images or the visual alone.

Despite these critical contributions, Milner’s notion of multimodality remains limited to considering only physical modes of multimedia (e.g. links, text, images). If we accept that we do indeed need to move beyond the concept of a “visual internet”, as Milner proposes, this flags an urgency to understand people’s visual experiences and interactions as multimodal, rather than simply considering the multimodality of the physical media. Furthermore, it flags a need to understand people’s visual social interactions as multimodal, because the way we practise looking involves more than the sense of sight. Networked visual relationships require further urgent academic attention, recognising that people communicate through many modes of media and that these interactions include many sensory modes.

What Do We Already Know About Visual Social Relationships of Selfies and Memes?

The literature on selfies and memes examined throughout this chapter has all pointed to ideas of connection and gesture, where visual experience is located in the cultural and sensory mode of touch. This research suggests that networked visual practices such as selfies and memes are (1) meaningful, (2) a gesture, (3) embodied practices dealing with identity and the body, and (4) multimodal visual sensory practices. These four fundamentals of selfies and memes point towards networked visual social practices being experiences of Touch.

Meaningful and Meaning-Making

Selfies and memes are culturally meaningful practices. The passionate debate surrounding selfies locates them as having meaning to people whether they love or hate them (Tiidenberg, 2018). Scholars to date have focused on how memes and selfies create meaning as embodied, gestural and multimodal practices.

Gesture

Gesture is essentially about practices of Touch because it is about the ways we connect and engage. Networked visual practices involve a variety of gestural responses and interactions, including how we connect with or touch others using memes and selfies, and the personal associations and connections that images gesture to us individually.

Selfies and photo-based memes act as gestures in two ways: they gesture ideas as a form of communication with others, and they are both culturally meaningful and significant gestural practices.

The definition of memes to date has focused on gesture-making, which includes how media gestures, as well as how people engage in particular practices of gesture as mimic. For example, the concept of prospective photography (Shifman, 2014a) essentially locates photography as a gestural medium, identifying how it beckons to people to engage. Besides being simply gestural media, an essential element of memes is gestural interactions. Hyper-signification (Shifman, 2013, 2014a) identifies how people engage with cultural signifiers and codes, both of media and in communicative practices that subvert or expose social and cultural boundaries. The subversion or exposure of social and cultural boundaries is what produces the joke and how the joke works as a form of communicative gesture and interaction (Andreallo, 2017). The practice of reappropriation (Milner, 2018) is a form of mimic in meme-sharing that also relies on gestural meaning-making that is contextually specific. For example, an image from a historical painting or a stock image is recontextualised and afforded new meaning through text or image manipulation. This meaning-making is a gesture inviting a reaction of some sort. The meme then becomes a template for further reappropriation, and these contributions are also part of the gesturing process, referring to a standard conversation based on the meme template. These gestures and the clarity of the communicative gesture are essential to the success of the meme and its spreadability or circulation.

Selfies are also, above all else, a gesture (Senft & Baym, 2015). Visual culture scholars have identified this centrality of gesture in the practice with numerous physical touch metaphors, including grabbing (Senft & Baym, 2015), kinaesthesis (Frosh, 2015, 2018) and cutting (Warfield, 2016).

In photographic practices of selfies and memes, such as prospective photography, photography also gestures as an embodied media by beckoning us to act (Shifman, 2014a). Photographs have the potential to gesture intimate and personal meanings for individuals that are so close to self that metaphors of flesh, including umbilical cord (Barthes, 1980/2010) and skin (Barthes, 1980/2010; Senft, 2015), have been used to describe the personal association and intimacy of connection.

The main difference between memes and selfies as gestures lies in the nature of the gesture. Memes rely on gesture and sharing as a form of interaction: for something to be imitated in public, it has to be shared, and in this way, memes are always a group rather than a singular object. Selfies, on the other hand, are not always created for sharing; they can also be used for self-contemplation or documentation. Even when selfies are not shared, they still have the capacity to act as a form of cultural gesture because they are significant and culturally meaningful.

Embodied

All the definitions of memes and selfies in the literature throughout this chapter identify digital social networks as their point of evolution from traditional social relationships. The description of digitally networked social relationships as embodied identifies virtual and physical realities as aspects of the self rather than as separate entities. As photographic practices, selfies and memes are also identified as embodied practice (Barthes, 1980/2010), where connections to photographs can be intimate and are an aspect of identification, identity performance as well as self-representation. Recognising selfies and memes as sensorily inscribed embodied practices (Farman, 2012, 2015, 2020) locates these practices beyond simply visual sensory interactions. It locates them as gestural visual practices that simultaneously flag visual interactions and sensory modes of touch.

Multimodal Visualities

Throughout this chapter, I have described how scholars grappling with descriptions and explanations of visual practices have drawn on aspects and concepts of touch, recognising that visual interaction extends beyond vision or sight. Although Milner (2018) has identified digitally networked visual practices as being multimodal, this identification sought to locate visual media in the context of multimedia that might include, for example, hypertext, words and video. One of the problems with locating meaning in physical modes of media alone is that it disregards the embodied nature of networked digital practice, where the body is also the text on which cultural meanings are inscribed. The networked self is not separate from other ideas of self, and the way we experience digital social networks is as sensorily inscribed embodied subjects (Farman, 2020). As all sensory processes are never experienced in isolation, I propose that a deeper and more complex analysis and understanding of social relationships is needed, which approaches visual practices as including more than one mode of communication and experience.

Where to from Here?

As we have seen, research suggests that selfies and memes are practices of Touch. The proliferation of terms to describe visual social relationships highlights the limitations of the visual as an isolated sensory mode. Furthermore, it flags an urgency for research that considers how visual practices work as Touch and connection.

In Chap. 3, I will define Touch more fully as it is understood in everyday interactions and propose the fundamental means to map Touch as culturally significant and meaningful.