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This article argues that selfieing and data visualization, in mutually informative ways, can help us broach the epistemic intelligibility of the digital epoch: knowledge generation not as truth claims, but as effects of visibility. Drawing on Foucault's proposition of visibility in his archaeological approaches to human sciences, this study aims to show that the governing mode of knowledge formation today consists of layers of visibility. I propose to use the concept metavisibility to make sense of the nexus of visibilities instantiated by selfieing and data visualization. This study is intended as a theoretical inquiry rather than an empirical study. The methodological intervention is manifold: first, to respond to contentions that pronounce the diminished relevance of the visual in a world of vibrant multisensory media; second, to dialogue with studies of the problematic of visibility in the digital context; and, third, to critique discursive formulations of digital media that appear complacent about the power of digitized knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to previous reports, selfie takers in widely different cultural contexts prefer poses showing the left cheek more than the right cheek. This posing bias may be interpreted as evidence for a right-hemispheric specialization for the expression of facial emotions. However, earlier studies analyzed selfie poses as categorized by human raters, which raises methodological issues in relation to the distinction between frontal and three-quarter poses. Here, we provide converging evidence by analyzing the (extended) selfiecity database which includes automatic assessments of head rotation and of emotional expression. We confirm a culture- and sex-independent left-cheek bias and report stronger expression of negative emotions in selfies showing the left cheek. These results are generally consistent with a psychobiological account of a left cheek bias in self-portraits but reveal possible unexpected facts concerning the relation between side bias and lateralization of emotional expression.

Sharing photos, videos and comments on social media may seem an idle pastime, but it is not without its uses where urban design is concerned. Analysing such posts can yield helpful indicators as to how people experience the built environment. Lev Manovich and Agustin Indaco, of the Software Studies Lab at the University of California, San Diego and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, here outline two of the Lab's recent research projects, which have involved examining extensive Instagram data from various cities around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]