Narratives of Safety on Social Media: The Case of #mysafetyselfie

This article draws on the case of #mysafetyselfie as an example of how social media can be used to highlight the social and spatial factors affecting women's experience with safety. In particular, I consider the ways in which media technology mediates embodied practice through an examination of the selfie as a form of relational place making. In the first section, I situate #mysafetyselfie as a node along a continuum of sociospatial work by Jay Pitter—the project's initiator—stemming from her personal and professional engagement with safety. I then draw from mobile interface theory to argue for the selfie as a practice of embodied implacement, which situates experience as contextually informed. In the next section, I conduct a close reading of three safety selfies from the project, in which safety is framed by the subject in intelligent and creative ways. I conclude by reflecting on the outcomes of #mysafetyselfie and the ethical responsibility of curating stories both offline and online.