Not all selfies end up on social media — at least not on public profiles — even when they’re as iconic as the one with former US president Barack Obama, former British Prime Minister David Cameron, and former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt.
We’ve all seen the photos of them attempting the selfie during the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg in 2013. Those photos went viral on social media and virtually every newspaper — online and offline — in the world talked about it.
But where was it posted?
Honestly nowhere, although there are photo of Thorning Schmidt texting or posting on social media. And apparently it was her very first selfie. Quite a start indeed!
My selfie with Obama and Cameron at Mandela's funeral turned me into selfie queen says @HelleThorning_S #FortuneMPW - was her first ever
That same year — 2013 — the Oxford dictionary added the word selfie to its online edition. Merriam-Webster added it a year later.
So, what is a selfie?
According to Oxford, it is “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.” The key here is the fact that selfies are photos that we take or ourselves, as they’re mostly characterized by the classic extended-arm pose — or even half-faces left out of the picture.
Hilariously, the first example they cite states:
Occasional selfies are acceptable, but posting a new picture of yourself every day isn’t necessary.
Since that Obama-Cameron-Thorning Schmidt moment in South Africa, selfies have become a daily occurrence for all generations and on all digital platforms. And not only for the stars of Hollywood immortalized in Ellen De Generes’ second-most-retweeted-selfie-of-all-times (the first most retweeted one is the so-called Chicken Nugget Tweet), but also for world leaders, government officials, ambassadors, and diplomats.
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars
I wonder how many likes and retweets the Obama-Cameron-Thorning Schmidt selfie would have gotten. After all, Obama went viral many times before, including a Facebook video he recorded for BuzzFeed where he is famously using a selfie stick.
“How did we get Obama to use a selfie stick?,” writes Buzzfeed. “Oh, because he wants you to go to healthcare.gov.”
The video itself received 62 million views and almost 1.5 million likes!
But how popluar are selfies among world leaders and politicians?
For National Selfie Day 2017, Twitter posted a Moment with some of the most famous government selfies, including selfies with the Pope, former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Canadian Prime Minister Justine Trudeau, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Argentinian President Mauricio Macri.
To celebrate #NationalSelfieDay here are some 🔥📸 from governments around the 🌏 https://t.co/9q6hYpO6VM
Selfie Power Players
Macri in particular has been quite active with selfies as well as strategic and creative in how he uses them.
In April 2014, he responded with a selfie — posted on all his social media channels — to NASA campaign #GlobalSelfies to celebrate Earth Day.
With that campiagn, NASA asked people all around the world a simple question: “Where are you on Earth Right Now?”
The goal was to use each picture as a pixel in the creation of a “Global Selfie” image — a mosaic that would look like Earth appeared from space on Earth Day.
The image was built using 36,422 individual photos, including probably that of Macri, that were posted on social media and tagged #globalselfie on or around April 22, 2014. People on every continent — 113 countries and regions in all — posted selfies. From Antarctica to Yemen, Greenland to Guatemala, Micronesia to the Maldives, Pakistan, Poland, Peru — and on. The zoommable image was assembled after weeks of curating more than 50,000 #globalselfie submissions — not all were accessible or usable — from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr.
Back to Macri, the Argentinian president has not only played and experimented with selfies, but also with augmented reality selfies on Snapchat.
Terminó la reunión con @cuervotinelli
Also in 2016, Macri on Snapchat during his visit to tech and innovation festival Tecnopolis.
Snapchat might be the latest crazy for New Zealand prime minister Bill English, who debuted on the app with a selfie, as I was writing this post.
So @pmbillenglish is on snapchat & also his bitmoji is better than yours
The Power of Selfies
The power of selfies resides in the one element that often is missing in politics and diplomacy: approachability. It’s clear that selfies are very useful tools when campaigning for public office — as they allow candidates to appear more approachable and personal — but they have a great potential when it comes to diplomacy as well, often seen as happening behind closed doors and away from the masses.
Justin Trudeau of Canada has shown many times how selfies have a role to play in foreign policy.
During the recent NATO summit in Brussels, Trudeau showed off his new NATO-themed socks on Instagram Stories — apparently he is social-media-famous for his colorful and crazy socks :)
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had NATO-themed socks on today at NATO HQ. I guess he *really* supports Arti… https://t.co/wF6lCnImtk
Breaking: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shows off his socks to Merkel & C.O. at the NATO summit.
And last year, during a reception at the White House on the sidelines of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, he posted a selfie with then-Italian Prime Minister Renzi — showing how diplomatic relations can become true friendships and even “bromance” as described recently for the rapport that Trudeau has built lately with French president Macron.
Great to see my friend @matteorenzi tonight - spero di vedervi presto #staytuned
And here, a few months later, Trudeau with then-US president Barack Obama at the North American Leaders Summit in Ottawa, also attended by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto.
One more for the road! À la prochaine. #NALS2016
Considering that world leaders and politicians are often accompanied by a staff photographer to capture the best moments of a campaign stop or an international trip and summit, selfies show the human side of them, a true behind-the-scenes.
They also give a glimpse at their private lives, like this one posted on Instagram for Trudeau’s wife’s birthday.
And look at what happens when you put Trudeau and Macri in the same room!
According to a 2017 study on World Leaders on Instagram, while “very few world leaders manage their own Instagram account,” some are, at least occasionally, as shown by the selfies that they have posted.
The study, published in April by communications powerhouse Burson-Marsteller, indicates that in 2016, “Thirteen world leaders have occasionally taken their own pictures and selfies,” including Macri, Trudeau, Peña Nieto, but also Indonesian president Joko Widodo, and prime ministers Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Erna Solberg of Norway, Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, Najib Razak of Malaysia, Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Denmark.
“Most world leaders have embraced the selfie culture of their fans, happily agreeing to be featured in selfies — the digital equivalent of an autograph,” Burson-Marsteller states. “A group of admirers will generally cuddle up close to their favorite leader to take a selfie. Instagram accounts come alive particularly during election campaigns, with pictures of politicians surrounded by a crowd of admirers wanting to capture a selfie.”
Like Macri, Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong is not shy when it comes to selfies, and often times it posts what he calls “welfies,” or group selfies — even experimenting with selfie sticks and 360 technology.
And here using both at the same time, to celebrate Singapore’s National Day with a 360° wefie with the Istana Ceremonial Guard:
Handy for when regular wefies can’t squeeze everyone into the same photo!
A collector of selfies is Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak who seems to post on Instagram one for almost every meeting he has with foreign leaders.
From the left: Malaysian prime minister Razak with Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore; former president of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono; former US president Barack Obama; Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud; Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe Ismail ibn Musa Menk; Narendra Modi of India; and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain.
Another great example is prime minister Modi of India who has chosen Twitter and Facebook mostly for his selfies. “Selfie diplomacy,” as famously tweeted in 2015 by Gopal Baglay, official spokesperson of the Indian ministry of external affairs.
“While the younger generation is obsessed by the selfie craze, Narendra Modi too was bitten by the ‘selfie bug’ and now has turned out to be a selfie expert,” wrote in 2015 Sandra Marina Fernandes of One India News. “Modi never seems to miss a chance to click a selfie. Whether it is clicking selfies with children or the crowd Modi never hesitates from clicking a selfie and is seen obliging his supporters most of the times.”
And his selfie obsession has earned him fame even outside of India.
“Prime minister Modi is very popular among the Chinese people,” said China’s ambassador to India Le Yucheng at the launch of the Chinese translation of his biography Modi — Rise of a New Star. “The photos of him trying the spinning wheel and swing with President Xi Jinping and his super-selfie with Premier Li Keqiang are a big hit among Chinese fans,” he added.
Selfie Elections
In a way you can say that Modi’s love for selfies contributed to his election as prime minister. The day he casted his vote, Modi posted a selfie on Twitter using hashtag #SelfieWithModi and asking his followers to share their selfies while voting to create a giant mosaic of Modi.
Selfie is in! Share yours using #SelfieWithModi & see what happens https://t.co/2s2BZ7GvuC
The website he set up (https://mosaic.narendramodi.in/ but no longer available) invited voters: “In this selfie season share yours with #SelfieWithModi and become part of this mosaic”. Adding: “Together, lets become agents of change and lay the foundation of a strong and developed India.”
Oh Wow! Mosaic of your #SelfieWithModi check this out: https://t.co/kMyLbSljtw
And Modi was also “the first political leader to use a Twitter Mirror, an exclusive app, usually the province of pop stars and red-carpet types, that produces autographed selfies and posts them to Twitter on his tours,” as the Wall Street Journal explained back in 2015.
With my friend @TonyAbbottMHR at the MCG.
Video Selfies
100,000 likes on Facebook, and counting. Almost 5,000 comments, 13,000 shares, and more than 1 million views in the first 24 hours.
This is the result of a video selfie posted a few days ago by Hollywood actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Facebook during a meeting with French president Macron.
“We will deliver together to make the planet great again,” says Macron standing right next to Schwarzenegger.
“I was truly honored to meet with President Emmanuel Macron about how we can work together for a clean energy future,” the Facebook reads.
“The surprise selfie video follows Trump’s announcement on June 1 that he intends to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, a non-binding deal that set emissions-reduction targets for 145 countries in order to combat climate change,” explained Politico.
Video selfies are becoming quite viral when world leaders take them.
Earlier this year, Indonesian president Widodo, very popular on social media, showed how video selfies are able to create huge engagement. In March, he posted one on Facebook during a luncheon with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, to kick off the king’s 12-day state visit to Indonesia.
So far the video has captured over 3 million views, almost 200,000 likes, about 50,000 shares, and 14,000 comments.
This past January, Canada’s Trudeau took to Snapchat to answer questions in a selfie-styled Live Story, the first Live Story with a world leader, according to Adweek.
View this video on YouTube
“While Snapchat has done similar Q&As with Kevin Hart and Selena Gomez, today’s story is the first time a politician has participated in one, possibly indicating that more elected officials will use the app as a communications platform,” the paper reported.
And the questions Trudeau took were not only about politics.
“What hair products do you use to keep your hair looking like this?,” a student asked.
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