CIT bids to snap record for mass ‘selfie’

Irish students are hoping to snap up the first world record for a mass ‘selfie’.

Organisers confirmed that despite the awful weather, 229 students turned up and turned their smartphone cameras on themselves for the fundraiser at Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) yesterday.

A selfie — the Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year last year — is a photograph you take of yourself, usually for upload to a social networking site. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Beyoncé and Cheryl Cole, some in various states of undress and some of whom focus their cameras on various parts of their bodies, have all hit the headlines in recent months for their efforts. US president Barack Obama caused a stir when he took a ‘selfie’ with David Cameron and Danish PM Helle Thorning- Schmidt at a memorial service for Nelson Mandela in December.