ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the selfie can be understood as a tool for and of digital intimate publics. In particular, the selfie inflects the cultural milieu in which it is taken—in this case, the selfie has one of the longest histories in South Korea, emerging in the 2000s. In the case of the Sewol disaster and its hundreds of selfies-as-eulogies, it also signified a relational bond—a cultural intimacy and digital intimate public—specific to Korean culture. Genres such as the selfie have become an omnipresent barometer for contemporary, networked global culture, which represent new configurations between photography, digital culture, and what can be called “kinesthetic sociability”. This relationship between emotion, grief, and affect is most apparent in the Sewol disaster, whereby selfies operated as self-designated eulogies for the high school children who were tragically killed. The selfies eulogies of the high school children spur on Koreans in their mobilization.
