The trend of selfies has become a new culture in society. Social networking sites have offered individuals, especially youth, opportunities to present themselves. This study aims to understand what elements Malaysian youth consider when taking a selfie. A sequential mixed method research approach was used first to collect qualitative data through the focused-group discussion method and then by a survey's quantitative data. Two focus group discussions were held to gather the youth's opinions, and the qualitative data were used to build a questionnaire and distributed to 395 youth in Klang Valley of Malaysia. The results show that the youth consider three significant elements, i.e., situational, technical, and social. Among the factors, overall, the technical factor is the most critical (mean = 4.587), followed by the social factor (mean = 4.541) and lastly situational factor (mean = 4.106). However, one of the items in the social factor outstands the others (mean = 5.005). The youths deemed that taking selfies with friends and others without considering their religious and ethnic background is the most important thing. This study concluded that even though the youths pay more attention to how to take a good selfie technically but at the same time, they do consider being inclusive towards other ethnic groups in their social life.
Barry, C. T., Doucette, H., Loflin, D. C., Rivera-Hudson, N., & Herrington, L. L. (2015). “Let Me Take a Selfie”: Associations Between Self-Photography, Narcissism, and Self-Esteem. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000089
Bernama. (2014). Selfie, hashtag dan tweet muncul dalam Kamus Dewan. Astro Awani. https://www.astroawani.com/berita-malaysia/selfie-hashtag-dan-tweet-muncul-dalam-kamus-dewan-36543
Buffardi, L. E., Campbell, W. K. (2010). Narcissism and social network websites. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1303-1314.
Briggs, H. (2014). 'Selfie' body image warning issued. BBC News. http://www.bbc.com/news/health- 26952394
Bruno, N., Bode, C., & Bertamini, M. (2017). Composition in portraits: Selfies and wefies reveal similar biases in untrained modern youths and ancient masters, Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition,22(3), 279-293.
Chua, T. H., & Chang, L. (2016). Follow me and like my beautiful selfies: Singapore teenage girls’ engagement in self-presentation and peer comparison on social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 190-197.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.011
Diefenbach, S., & Christoforakos, L. (2017). The selfie paradox: Nobody seems to like them yet everyone has reasons to take them. An exploration of psychological functions of selfies in self-presentation. Front. Psychol. 8:7. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00007
Department of Statistics Malaysia. (2021). Laporan survei penggunaan dan capaian ICT oleh individual dan isi rumah. Putrajaya: Department of Statistics Malaysia.
Goodnow, T. (2016). The selfie moment: The rhetorical implications of digital self-portraiture for culture. In A. Benedek & A. Veszelszki (Eds.). In the beginning was the image: The omnipresence of pictures (pp. 131-137). Bern: Peter Lang AG.
Hess, A. (2015). The Selfie Assemblage. International Journal of Communication, 9, 1629–1646.
Katz, J. E., & Crocker, E. T. (2016). Selfies as interpersonal communication. In A. Benedek & Á. Veszelszki (Eds.) In the beginning was the image: The omnipresence of pictures (pp. 131-137). Bern: Peter Lang AG.
Kitzinger, J. (1995). Qualitative research: Introducing focus group. BMJ, 311, 299-302.
Miller, D., Costa, E., Haynes, N., McDonald, T., Nicolescu, R., Sinanan, J., Spyer, J., Venkatraman, S., & Wang, X. (2016). How the world changed social media. London: UCL Press.
Morgan, D. L. (1996). Focus Group. Ann. Rev. Sociol, 22, 129-152.
Moneva, J. C., Perolino, J. A., & Ycong, S. T. (2020). Selfie and self-esteem. International Journal of Social Science Research, 8(2), 131-142.
Qiu, L., Lu, J., Yang, S., Qu, W., & Zhu, T. (2015). What does your selfie say about you?. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 443-449.
Shin, Y., Kim, M., Im, C., & Chong, S. C. (2017). Selfie and self: The effect of selfies on self-esteem and social sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 111, 139-145.
Steinmetz, K. (2013). And Oxford’s word of the year is... Time Newsfeed. https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/18/and-oxfords-word-of-the-year-is/
Sturt, D., & Nordstrom, T. (2014). The 'Selfie': Mental Disorder or Insight to Getting Better Results?. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidsturt/2014/04/29/the-selfie-mental-disorder-or-insight-to-getting-better-results/?sh=6aaf04be6cc2
Wilson, C. (2014). The selfiest cities in the world: TIME’s definitive ranking. Time, http://time.com/swafotos-cities-world-rankings/
Zhao, S., Grasmuck, S., & Martin, J. (2008). Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5), 1816–1836. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CHB.2008.02.012
In-Text Citation: (Fee et al., 2022)
To Cite this Article: Fee, L. Y., Majid, A. A., & Adnan, Z. H. (2022). Malaysian Youth’s Views on Elements in Taking Selfie. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(12), 1882– 1892.
Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
