Haunting shame and haunted bodies: Mixed feelings and entangled times in the online sharing of personal images

Taking photos of oneself and sharing them on social media or instant messaging apps is a practice haunted by shame. Although both media and popular wisdom view it as a simple exercise in narcissism and vanity, research into this practice shows contradictions, ambivalence, and tensions. Drawing on an empirical study carried out with young adults in Madrid, we explore the ambivalence, or “conflicting desires” as one interviewee put it, associated...