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Generative models have revolutionized de novo drug design, allowing to produce molecules on-demand with desired physicochemical and pharmacological properties. String based molecular representations, such as SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System) and SELFIES (Self-Referencing Embedded Strings), have played a pivotal role in the success of generative approaches, thanks to their capacity to encode atom- and bond- information and ease-of-generation. However, such 'atom-level' string representations could have certain limitations, in terms of capturing information on chirality, and synthetic accessibility of the corresponding designs. In this paper, we present fragSMILES, a novel fragment-based molecular representation in the form of string. fragSMILES encode fragments in a 'chemically-meaningful' way via a novel graph-reduction approach, allowing to obtain an efficient, interpretable, and expressive molecular representation, which also avoids fragment redundancy. fragSMILES contributes to the field of fragment-based representation, by reporting fragments and their 'breaking' bonds independently. Moreover, fragSMILES also embeds information of molecular chirality, thereby overcoming known limitations of existing string notations. When compared with SMILES, SELFIES and t-SMILES for de novo design, the fragSMILES notation showed its promise in generating molecules with desirable biochemical and scaffolds properties. Molecular representations based on SMILES strings play a pivotal role in the success of generative approaches for de novo design, however capturing information on synthetic accessibility remains challenging. Here, the authors report fragSMILES as a fragment-based molecular representation in strings that embed chemical information and molecular chirality, showing promise in generating molecules with desirable properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores Fort's alternative scientific theories and their critique of mainstream science. Topics include Charles Fort's "The Book of the Damned" and his challenge to contemporary scientific explanations, the use of rare infrared film to create images inspired by Western philosophy's history, and the transition from self-portraiture to the influence of selfie culture with more rigorous image construction.

With the development of the social media era, the phenomenon of selfie editing has gradually attracted widespread attention from all walks of life. The incidence and impact of selfie editing is high among young people in China, and China has not yet formed a uniformly used measurement tool, so this study will develop the selfie editing behavior scale （SEBS） applicable to college students in China. A semi-opened questionnaire for selfie editing was designed by literature analysis, 241 college students participated in the pre-investigation, and the initial scale items were compiled according to the preinvestigation results and previous literatures. The college students in Beijing were tested by convenient sampling. Among them, valid data of 457 subjects were collected for item analysis and exploratory factor analysis, and 456 subjects for confirmatory factor and reliability analysis, and were assessed with the other selfie editing scale（SES） and consideration of cosmetic surgery （COCS）for criteria validity. After the interval of 4 weeks, 173 college students were retested for test-retest reliability analysis. The results showed that the SEBS had 19 items containing four dimensions with factor loadings ranging from 0.53 to 0.82, explaining 62.34% of the total variance, and a good model fit index（c²/df = 2.54, ERMSA = 0.06, ICF = 0.94, ITL = 0.92）. The SEBS score was positively correlated with the scores of each school standard （r = 0.18~0.67）. The Cronbach's α coefficient were 0.90 for the total questionnaire and 0.76~0.84 for the 5 factors. The test-retest reliabilities were 0.79 for the total questionnaire and 0.65~0.76 for the 5 factors. The SEBS developed in this study performed well in terms of reliability and validity, which is suitable for assessing the level of college students in selfie editing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este artigo dialoga com os dados de uma pesquisa etnográfica virtual, oriundos de um grupo focal online, realizado com 17 mulheres jovens usuárias do aplicativo Instagram. Analisa-se a produção de sentidos sobre as selfies enquanto práticas culturais implicadas em processos subjetivos e identitários. As análises elucidam o caráter narrativo e performático das selfies, mediante as quais os sujeitos experienciam a si mesmos e seus corpos em busca de visibilidade e aprovação social. O texto trata, ainda, sobre as visualizações, curtidas e comentários enquanto intencionalidades dessas práticas e os efeitos que produzem nas subjetividades. Conclui-se que a identidade se desloca da estabilidade para uma identidade que carrega traços da era hipermoderna: efêmera, volátil e experimental.

'Visual turn' scholarship in International Relations (IR) acknowledges the importance of new information and communication technology for the production and circulation of images but lacks sustained engagement with the technologies themselves and how they interact with humans in the visual production of security. This article brings the visual turn into conversation with Science and Technology Studies (STS) and mobilises Latour and Woolgar's notion of inscription to show how the production of visual artefacts and their security effects are conditioned by human/device interaction. It advances the argument that the representational force of a visual artefact is dependent not only on the content and quality of the artefact itself, but also on the specific human/device relations that condition its production. To illustrate this, the article theorises the smartphone as an inscription device and the selfie as an inscription practice and analyses the case of Zelensky's selfie videos from the first few days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Selfies inscribe meaning to security issues by mobilising the photographic affordances of indexicality, composition, and reflection in unique ways. Specifically, they focus images on the communicative acts of their producers and play on the relationship between human and device to invoke feelings of immediacy, authenticity, and intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, social media filters have become a pervasive visual phenomenon. Filtered selfies with conspicuous animal features or flawless makeup have flooded social media platforms. In this study, it is argued that the massive popularity of these social media filters is not ungrounded. Instead, these viral filters have their origins in ancient or even pre-historic times. Approaching this phenomenon from an anthropological perspective, social media animal filters are traced as far back as classical mythology and folklore tales of human-animal hybrids. Makeup filters are similarly linked back to ancient cosmetic practices. In this attempt to demonstrate the persistence of both human-animal imagery and the use of makeup, this study also explores their deep psychological implications. The central argument is that both makeup and human-animal hybrid imagery, re-invented in a digital form, have reached extreme popularity because they strike deep chords of recognition in the human psyche, appealing to primordial desires and instincts. This article also draws attention to how social media platforms make use of archaic imagery and motifs to serve marketing purposes, capitalizing on human's deepest and oldest instincts and desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the release of the open-source AI model Stable Diffusion in August 2022, a panoply of apps that create AI-generated portraits, or avatars, have exploded in popularity. One of the most notable examples is AI-powered photo editing app Lensa, owned by Prisma Labs. Lensa launched in 2018 but went viral in late 2022 due to the launch of its Magic Avatar feature, which uses Stable Diffusion to create fantastical (and occasionally bizarre) portraits of users. This paper analyzed the global English-language press coverage of Lensa and found that it focused on the app’s predatory data practices, the biased content it produced, and the user behaviors associated with it. I argue that this coverage provides evidence of discursive closure around key issues associated with visual generative AI that supports the maintenance of the status quo. I suggest that the press coverage of Lensa, which both articulates key AI-related harms and frames those harms as intractable and insolvable, creates a discourse of inevitability that has implications for how these issues are understood by the public, and for the approaches that are taken to address them. In doing so, it not only offers distinct advantages to those who stand to benefit most from this discourse, but also forecloses more imaginative public discussions of what visual generative AI could– or should– be.

Selfies provide unique opportunities to explore, document, and interact with the self through photography. However, the inherent intrapersonal affordance of self-portraiture becomes a unique manifestation of masspersonal theory when selfies are shared, a step that is often assumed but not unpacked in selfie research. Therefore, it is essential to understand when and for whom these intrapersonal and interpersonal moments evolve into masspersonal moments or communication episodes. This study uses a novel strategy to investigate selfie behavior–the likelihood of taking and sharing selfies–to assess individual differences between selfie-takers, or "selfiers". Discerning selfiers–people more likely to take than share selfies–report greater control and self-esteem compared to non-discerning selfiers, who are equally as likely to take as share selfies. Furthermore, control mediates the effect of selfier type on self-esteem; discerning selfiers report that others are not in control of their life, resulting in greater security regarding others' perceptions of them. The current findings reveal the unique effects of differential deployment of selfies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media and other platforms have become an essential part of outdoor activities as they influence how nature is experienced and engaged with, but also what good nature is seen as. In this article, we explore how social understandings of nature and digital technologies are mutually performed. Using the empirical case of nature selfies—an archetype of imagery on social media platforms—posted on Instagram, Facebook, and Tripadvisor, and a small participatory "breaching experiment" aimed at collecting "ugly nature selfies," we analyse and interrogate nature/society relationships displayed online within the platform contexts of attention economy and affordances. We conclude that nature selfies reinforce the desirability of consuming "beautiful" nature, while attention economy and platform affordances limit the possibilities for alternative nature/society relationships to be developed and promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores teenage girls' engagement with digital images on social media. Using new feminist materialism, we foreground digital images as an assemblage of materialities (human and more‐than‐human) filled with affective potentials that materialise in/capacities. Drawing from interviews and focus group discussions, we show how the production and sharing of selfies through posting and sexting unlocked new ‘becomings’ through expressions of heterosexual desirability and pleasure but also generated fear through sexual objectification, sexual double standards and harassment. A recognition of digital images as materially embodied through which unequal gender power relations materialise is vital to addressing online sexual risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the concept of freedom has been appropriated by the far right to impose a number of authoritarian policies designed to dismantle the critical functions of public and higher education. It explores, in particular, the ways in which Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has used an appeal to freedom to punish critics, wage a war on trans people, misrepresent the history of slavery, and impose a new version of McCarthyism on higher education. It challenges what it terms neoliberal and fascist notions of freedom by making clear that democracy and capitalism are incompatible, and that any viable notion of freedom must address not only personal and political rights but also economic rights. Freedom from domination must be matched by a freedom to live in a world marked by the principles of justice, equality, and dignity. There is no freedom in the midst of massive inequalities in wealth, power, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens to queer and gender-non-conforming community, bodily expression and identity when many queer spaces are closed and communities move to online spaces? In this article, we critically reflect on our collaborative project bois of isolation (boi) – a platform within Instagram for people to share selfies of the spaces and processes through which they queer gender binaries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We ask to what extent online social media spaces can disrupt normative, binarized gender identity and provide ways of reimagining the selfie. Operating within digital capitalism, selfies often serve to circulate and reproduce dominant 'desirable' subjectivities in 'gender appropriate' places. However, we argue through interventions like boi young people carve out small spaces of dissent and respite in/from social media platforms and create forms of community during lockdown. By queering the visual representations of binarized gender and questioning the neoliberal individualized 'self' in 'selfies', young people construct communal aesthetic spaces in which gender plurality and fluidity are expressed and celebrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photography has recently received significant academic interest as a popular tourist activity. However, tourist selfie practises have not yet been thoroughly examined by tourism scholars. This study aimed to investigate tourist selfies storytelling and to determine if tourists'selfies at tourist destinations reveal specific aspects of the host destination, implying an embodiment of particular preferences, intentions, and motivations. In this study, an exploratory analysis employing a two-step qualitative approach was conducted. A semiotic analysis of 317 tourist selfie photos and two phases of in-depth interviews with eleven tourists visiting Egypt on a 7-day packaged tour were used. The findings reveal that tourists prefer to capture host communities' appearance and attributes in their selfies for different motivations and intentions. Intentions regarding impressions, advertisements, suggestions, and descriptions for these attributes were the intentions that shaped the tourists' selfie practise. This study contributes to our understanding of the content of travel-related selfies and tourist behaviour at destinations. It proposes management implications to assist tourism and hospitality professionals in engaging with and profiting from tourists' selfies practise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small-molecule drug design aims to generate compounds that target specific proteins, playing a crucial role in the early stages of drug discovery. Recently, research has emerged that utilizes the GPT model, which has achieved significant success in various fields to generate molecular compounds. However, due to the persistent challenge of small datasets in the pharmaceutical field, there has been some degradation in the performance of generating target-specific compounds. To address this issue, we propose an enhanced target-specific drug generation model, Adapt-cMolGPT, which modifies molecular representation and optimizes the fine-tuning process. In particular, we introduce a new fine-tuning method that incorporates an adapter module into a pre-trained base model and alternates weight updates by sections. We evaluated the proposed model through multiple experiments and demonstrated performance improvements compared to previous models. In the experimental results, Adapt-cMolGPT generated a greater number of novel and valid compounds compared to other models, with these generated compounds exhibiting properties similar to those of real molecular data. These results indicate that our proposed method is highly effective in designing drugs targeting specific proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildlife tourism has experienced a shift from passive observations towards highly interactive encounters between tourists and wild animals. Tourist behaviour is influenced by the pursuit of 'visual trophies' for social media. More specifically, the 'wildlife selfie' phenomenon, which requires proximity to a plethora of animal species, may contribute to compromised tourist safety and harassment of wildlife. This paper explores the perceptions of swim-with wildlife tour participants regarding wildlife-focused user-generated content such as wildlife selfies in three different commercial encounter settings in the South Pacific. In-depth qualitative interviews and a thematic analysis of the data yielded two prominent themes: Tourists perceived human-wildlife interactions online as 'a double-edged sword', identifying animal welfare as a key concern. Such content was found to shape the decision-making processes of tourists and affected tourists' perceptions, creating unrealistic expectations of wildlife encounters. Further, whale-swim participants were identified as non-selfie-takers/opponents, while seal swimmers and shark divers were somewhat supportive, actively participating in selfie-taking behaviour to provide proof to peers ('to selfie or not to selfie'). Those findings indicate that a sound monitoring of the constructed human-wildlife relationship in the twenty-first-century media landscape with a focus on guidelines and regulations to ensure tourist safety and animal welfare is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-portrayed photographs, more commonly known as selfies, are a modern way of expressing oneself at popular tourist destinations. Selfies enable individuals to be seen by others on the web. There has been fierce debate about whether taking selfies is appropriate from an ethical standpoint at tourist places with darker and more sensitive histories. This study, a first of its kind, is a multi-method analysis of tour guides' emotions towards selfie-taking tourists in the dark tourism location of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. As a phenomenon that has been introduced fairly recently, extant research has addressed the consequences selfies have on dark touristic sites, but no current study has considered the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The methods used to evaluate the current situation are netnography and one-on-one, in-depth interviews with Chernobyl tour guides. Findings show that there has been a degree of conflict between tour guides and tourists who take selfies. Performance of emotional labor is detected amongst some tour guides. Interestingly, this result emerged more during interviews than from data mining in the online community. Managers of the site of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are advised to look into ways of implementing a more responsible tourist behavior structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Medical students' social media addiction disrupts and lowers sleep quality, hurting their everyday life and academic performance, stressing the need for effective ways to promote their well-being and achievement. The study aims to estimate the prevalence of social media addiction and to find out the association with sleep quality among medical students in private medical college. Methodology: A cross-sectional study involving 792 MBBS students from a private medical college in Chengalpattu district, Tamil Nadu, utilized the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) to assess social media addiction and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) to evaluate sleep quality. Data were collected through a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire and analysed using SPSS version 25. Results: The study revealed a 17.7% prevalence of social media addiction among medical students, significantly associated with poor sleep quality, female gender, and morning social media use. Other factors included dependence on social media for updates, more than three hours of daily use, eye discomfort, Snapchat use, compulsion to post at least six photos and subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, duration, disturbances, use of sleeping medication, and Daytime dysfunction. Conclusions: Research demonstrates a significant correlation between social media addiction and poor sleep quality among medical students, highlighting the need for focused interventions and awareness activities to counteract its harmful influence.

This article draws on ten semi-structured interviews with mothers about their maternal selfie practices in order to explore how they use and navigate the form in relation to their motherhood identities and experiences. Whilst work on the form is still emerging, we examine the claim that maternal selfies offer space for a uniquely subjective expression/depiction of motherhood. As part of this, we explore how discussions of their selfie practices – and appraisals of the cultural circulation of the maternal selfie – resist and (re)produce discourses on acceptable digital and cultural paradigms of motherhood. The themes which emerged from these data were 1) the maternal selfie as empowerment, 2) authenticity as regulatory discourse and 3) the risks of negative affect. In drawing on work on neoliberal and intensive mothering frames, the article examines how the increasing emphasis (in digital cultures in particular) on displaying the complex realities of motherhood are implicated within the surveillance and self-surveillance of maternal visibility in ways which may (further) delimit the possibilities for maternal self-expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Soziale Welt is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Through a case study of Istanbul's Foto Görçek, playfully dubbed 'the world's first selfie studio', this article focuses on the changing photographic practices from the mid-1940s–1960s in modern Turkey, which experienced a dramatic political transition during the 1950s with the introduction of the multi-party regime following three decades of strictly secular Kemalist rule. This study explores how Foto Görçek challenged and transformed studio practices in Turkey, particularly during its increasing popularity in the 1950s–1960s, by allowing people to take up Elizabeth Edwards' notion of the 'theater of the self', or when the self also takes on the role of the photographer. Accordingly, the article looks at the affordances of the photo studio as a space where citizens reimagined their desired selves and when new ways of imagining the self were made available to them. Moreover, this study investigates how such new imagined selves in the aftermath of the Second World War served to renegotiate a desired modern Turkish identity resulting from the rigorous state-controlled nation-building process during the 1920s–1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVES. We reviewed the use of social media and its influence on rhinoplasty decisions. MATERIAL AND METHODS. The literature survey was performed in PubMed, EBSCO, UpToDate, and ProQuest Central databases of Kırıkkale University and Google and Google Scholar databases. RESULTS. Networking features available through social media sites allow users to discover and share countless photos, videos and links from their desktops and mobile devices. In the United Kingdom, over 55% of facial plastic surgeons reported that their cosmetic patients were inspired to look better in selfies. 53.4% of respondents felt that TV shows promoting plastic surgery impacted the popularity of such procedures, and 65.0% of respondents believed that social media had a similar effect. Males reported being much less satisfied with surgery than females and were less specific about why they were unhappy. One-third of patients regularly looked for information about rhinoplasty on social media. Less than a third were affected by celebrities who had rhinoplasty for cosmetic reasons. However, over three percent believed the social media ads portraying rhinoplasty as a safe surgical procedure. CONCLUSION. We concluded that social media platforms play a significant role for the decision to undergo rhinoplasty and postoperative patient satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce Bidirectional and Auto-Regressive Transformer for Reactions (BARTReact), a self-supervised deep learning model designed to predict chemical reactions. Built on the powerful Bidirectional and Auto-Regressive Transformer (BART) architecture, BARTReact is trained using the SELF-referencIng Embedded Strings (SELFIES), a molecular representation that ensures the production of only viable molecules, achieving an outstanding accuracy of 98.6 %.

Smartphones have made it nearly effortless to share images of branded experiences. This research classifies social media brand imagery and studies user response. Aside from packshots (standalone product images), two types of brand-related selfie images appear online: consumer selfies (featuring brands and consumers' faces) and an emerging phenomenon the authors term "brand selfies" (invisible consumers holding a branded product). The authors use convolutional neural networks to identify these archetypes and train language models to infer social media response to more than a quarter-million brand-image posts (185 brands on Twitter and Instagram). They find that consumer-selfie images receive more sender engagement (i.e., likes and comments), whereas brand selfies result in more brand engagement, expressed by purchase intentions. These results cast doubt on whether conventional social media metrics are appropriate indicators of brand engagement. Results for display ads are consistent with this observation, with higher click-through rates for brand selfies than for consumer selfies. A controlled lab experiment suggests that self-reference is driving the differential response to selfie images. Collectively, these results demonstrate how (interpretable) machine learning helps extract marketing-relevant information from unstructured multimedia content and that selfie images are a matter of perspective in terms of actual brand engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the mediating effect of self-objectification and narcissistic personality on the relationship between selfies and body image satisfaction. A total of 368 college students were administered a survey that included general information, selfie-related questions, a body image satisfaction scale, a body surveillance scale, and a narcissistic personality scale. Selfies, body image satisfaction, self-objectification, and narcissistic personality were shown to be positively correlated. Mediation modeling analysis found that selfies had a direct effect on body image satisfaction and that self-objectification and narcissistic personality mediated this relationship. Consequently, this study holds suggestions for researchers and educators searching for better exploration and attention to improve the content of education, guide students to set up a correct moral outlook, outlook on life and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turismo: Visão e Ação is the property of Turismo-Visao E Acao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ideas y Valores is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the digital identity of Daguguguji, one of the most famous microbloggers and microfiction writers on Sina Microblog. Despite having 3.9 million followers on Sina Weibo, his personal background remains veiled from the public. Daguguguji often refers to himself using nonsensical terms, animals, or neologisms irrelevant to his personal life, such as "a dog," "Zhang Dachui," "follow me," or "Zhang Wei." His profile pictures are not selfies, but images appropriated from other famous singers and writers, modified in a Dadaist style. Daguguguji's identity performance is substantially different from that of celebrities who use paratexts such as selfies and verbal descriptions to reveal their offline identities and inner selves. Instead, his writing can be conceptualized as parasitic use of the paratext, as the information displayed in his profile image, bio, posts, and reposts shows a parasitical mimesis of "who I am not," rather than an authentic self-display of "who I am." I propose that Daguguguji's identity performance is representative of the culture of anonymity in the Chinese mediascape, where netizens no longer seek to exhibit the "authentic self" but rather play with the "inauthentic persona," a persona parasitic on appropriated visual-verbal texts that are irrelevant to either their inner self or offline identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine human–animal encounters in Instagram selfies with seagulls. I ask how human–seagull relations are visualised, narrated and negotiated in Instagram posts with the hashtag “seagullselfie”. While my total data consist of 814 Instagram posts from before 2020 with #seagullselfie, I have chosen six photographs that represent different types of human–animal interactions for more detailed analysis, as they make visible human ambivalence towards non-human animals. For example, humans sometimes call seagulls “friends”, or even “cuties”, but at other times portray them as hungry, dirty and annoying – as “trash birds”. Drawing on Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeal interactions, I focus on the embodied agencies, both human and non-human, and the multispecies sharing of spaces considered “urban” or “natural”. My method of studying the photographs of seagulls and humans is inspired by new materialist “ways of following” art, being moved by photographs and seeing where they take me. I argue that seagulls cross the hierarchical dichotomies of nature and culture and contest the anthropocentric ideals of nature as something that should be accessible on human terms. I claim that there is no beautiful and passive “nature” in the seagull selfies that remains as a background for human action. Instead, in these six photographs, seagulls stalk humans, take their food, photobomb them, refuse to pose for their photographs and ignore their clumsy attempts at friendship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term sexting, coined in 2005, is still in its prime. Relying on a rather large number of image types (contextual pictures, inoffensive sexual pictures, joke images, offensive and unethical sexual pictures, private, or public selfies), sexting among youth may have many causes. This paper is an attempt at providing a school social worker’s job description by answering questions such as: Who sexts young people? What categories of young people are sexted? Where does sexting occur? When does sexting occur? How are young people sexted? Why are young people sexted? What are the consequences of sexting? And what should schools do? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of social networking sites and the overconfidence and lack of awareness that characterize the adolescent stage favor the assumption of risk behaviors on Instagram (e.g., self-objectified photos, that is, photos showing sexualized body parts such as skin cleavage or the abdomen). Two experimental studies examine the social perceptions of adolescents regarding the risk of suffering from cyberbullying behaviors by posting selfies on Instagram. Study 1 (N = 373 adolescents) revealed that participants perceived more risk when an individual uploaded an objectified selfie (vs. a non-objectified). Participants perceived that the target will be more likely to suffer from cyberbullying behaviors when they: (a) uploaded on Instagram an objectified selfie (vs. a non-objectified) and (b) were female (vs. male). Study 2 (N = 210 adolescents) showed that when a girl (vs. a boy) uploaded an objectified selfie, participants perceived more risk in her behavior and perceived that she would be more likely to suffer from cyberbullying behaviors. Specifically, female adolescents (vs. males) perceived that a girl (vs. a boy) would be a target of cyberbullying behaviors to a greater extent. Finally, participants perceived that uploading an objectified photo was more risky when the target was a girl (vs. a boy), which led to suffering from cyberbullying behaviors to a greater extent. These results can help to further understand the risk to which adolescents are exposed on Instagram, being higher among adolescent girls. Therefore, this work highlights the importance of considering gender differences in the design of cyberbullying prevention programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its everydayness, girls' digital exposure is often conceived as scandalous. Concerns about the potential of leaked nudes to "ruin" a girl's life are part of a long history of moral panics about girls and technology that mask fears about the public expression of female sexuality. Much teen media, however, counters this panic by exploring the social and technological dynamics at play in practices of sending sexual selfies. This article analyzes teen magazines and TV series to map the alternative mainstream discourse through which girls might frame their practices of self-exposure. Teen media incorporates the exposure built into everyday technological interactions in ways that allow girls' consensual sexuality to exist, visibly, as everyday. Magazines like Rookie and Teen Vogue and series like Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars employ such discourses in ways that often protect the hegemony of white femininity, even as they defend girls' right to privacy and expose the unique consequences of exposure queer girls. Teen media begins to offer alternative discourses of young women's sexual selfies that are aligned with the social and technological realities of digital culture, and which girls can mobilize to deconstruct exclusionary norms of privacy and visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate how young Chinese women use selfie-editing apps to create idealized versions of themselves and how these practices help them construct their identities. By conducting 30 interviews with highly educated Chinese women between the ages of 18 and 30 living in urban cities, the results of this study indicate that taking, editing, and sharing selfies have become increasingly embedded in their everyday lives. The female interviewees use the apps to narrow their jawline, change the size of their eyes and nose, remove acne, and smooth their skin, revealing that young women in China are not completely free of patriarchal beauty standards. However, the interviewees acknowledge that the selfies have captured their real lives and conveyed their personalities. They have been able to express their true selves and have gained self-pleasure from this process. In this way, the interviewees' online self-representation is deeply linked to their offline lives. This study enriches current debates on women's empowerment in contemporary China. The practice of online self-representation can be viewed as a process of self-actualization because it empowers women by solidifying their agency and further contributes to the formation of a reflexive identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Upper extremity function reflects disease progression in multiple sclerosis (MS). This study evaluated the feasibility, validity, and sensitivity to change of remote dexterity assessments applying human pose estimation to patient‐uploaded videos. Methods: A discovery cohort of 50 adults with MS recorded "selfie" videos of self‐care tasks at home: buttoning, brushing teeth, and eating. Kinematic data were extracted using MediaPipe Hand pose estimation software. Clinical comparison tests were grip and pinch strength, 9 hole peg test (9HPT), and vibration, and patient‐reported dexterity assessments (ABILHAND). Feasibility and acceptability were evaluated (Health‐ITUES framework). A validation cohort (N = 35) completed 9HPT and videos. Results: The modality was feasible: 88% of the 50 enrolled participants uploaded ≥3 videos, and 74% completed the study. It was also usable: assessments easy to access (95%), platform easy to use (97%), and tasks representative of daily activities (86%). The buttoning task revealed four metrics with strong correlations with 9HPT (nondominant: r = 0.60–0.69, dominant: r = 0.51–0.57, P < 0.05) and ABILHAND (r = −0.48, P = 0.05). Retest validity at 1 week was stable (r > 0.8). Cross‐sectional correlations between video metrics and 9HPT were similar at 6 months, and in the validation cohort (nondominant: r = 0.46, dominant: r = 0.45, P < 0.05). Over 6 months, pinch strength (5.8–5.0 kg/cm2, P = 0.05) and self‐reported pinch (ABILHAND) decreased marginally. While only 15% of participants worsened by 20% on 9HPT, 70% worsened in key buttoning video metrics. Interpretation: Patient‐uploaded videos represent a novel, patient‐centered modality for capturing dexterity that appears valid and sensitive to change, enhancing its potential to be disseminated for neurological disease monitoring and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen science in coastal ecosystems often involve (eco-)tourists that actively monitor reefs, species and pollution. Data collected by tourists, passively, was used to gain insight into landings of the largest fish, the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), in Pangandaran Bay, Indonesia. Monitoring of illegal fishing was halted due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and lockdowns. With two million, mainly Indonesian, tourists visiting Pangandaran Bay in 2020 (30% less than in 2019) enough tourists were present to record landings of whale sharks. Monitoring social media revealed reports of 10 whale shark landings between August 2020 and August 2022. Seven were in July–August of immatures 6–7 m in length. The information passively provided by tourists since COVID-19 have given insights into the biology of whale sharks, landing risks and how communities interact with sharks. Feeding back this information to tourists is challenging, yet vital, to cement a sense of belonging, purpose and attachment to their holiday location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand how people engage with art in the era of selfies, digital devices, and social media. It examines the audience experience of an art exhibition, where visitors are encouraged to use social media to share their art experience, to understand how such an approach might change the nature of visitor engagement with art. Arguably, selfies taken in the art space enrich the visitor's experience and engagement with art and function as co-creational, empowering, and authentic marketing tools for museums. Data for this research were collected through non-participant observation (ethnography) and netnography at the National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne, Australia. The results show that rather than promoting disengagement from the art piece, selfies in the art space become "networked material-discursive entanglements" empowering art consumers to co-create value and arts organizations to reduce their distance from consumers and reproduce the iconic authenticity of the artwork in the virtual space. The article contributes to selfie theory by overcoming the traditional view of selfies as manifestation of narcissistic self-expression. Instead, it promotes an interpretation of selfies as an empowering and democratizing means used by art consumers to develop narratives and identity projects in a context such as the museum where traditionally the development of the narrative is apanage of an elite. A further contribution provided by this research stems from the identification of clusters of visitors (i.e., reality escapers, art lovers, photoholics, and selfie lovers), placed on a continuum of value co-creation, which arts administrators need to be conscious of as they enter a more dynamic era of art consumption. By outlining managerial implications, this study provides an initial reflection on how arts managers can navigate the emerging era of the selfie in the museum context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]