Social media impression management essay
“All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely player… ” (2.7.146-47). Shakespeare’s poem pointed out everyone is only actors on the stage of this world. Goffman (1959) has a similar theory with Shakespeare that everyone is a performance; at any given moment, we play different roles. Through social media, everyone can carefully select what role that we want to project on virtual sphere.I argue that my identity changed varies different platform. In this essay, I discovered who am I online, what roles I was playing and how did I manage the impression I crave to give others on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Line.
“In each of these contacts, he tends to act out what is sometimes called a line – that is, a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which he expresses his view of the situation and, through this, his evaluation of the participants, especially himself” (Goffman, 1967). Line is an impression I prefer to show to others. On Instagram, there is an identity that others cannot find on my Facebook. At the beginning, I opened an Instagram account to share my handmade works and drawings (Fig. 1.). I aspired to show a line that I was creative and talented. People liked me and left comments under my photos was giving me face (Goffman, 1967). They helped me to develop a positive face. And later I did not have the passion for engaging in DIY, and therefore, I began to post comparatively special things in my daily life, for example, my travel (Fig. 2.).
Front region is where the performance takes place; the back region is what I am literally doing behind the front stage (Goffman, 1959). On Fig.3, It can see that I shared a cheesecake and 8 egg tarts. It was obviously homemade and...
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...ge. Even now, I am engaged in a performance in which I am trying to not only apply Goffman theory on social media but information about me through sharing my front and back region, the writing style in which I did and so on. That is impression management. No one can draw a clear line between what is a front region and a back region of a platform (Goffman, 1959), it can transform freely. My roles, identities and face are changing through Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Line (Goffman, 1967).
References
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual; essays on face-to-face behavior. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Shakespeare, W., Mowat, B., & Werstine, P. (2004). As you like it. New York: Washington Square Press.
Fig. 13 Sharing my feelings to friends on Line.
Individuals conceived between the years of 1980 and 2000, as indicated by this article, experience serious difficulties finding their actual self due to the online networking outlets; they regularly depict another person life of a fantasy dream American life on the web. As today’s more youthful era makes the transition to adulthood, trying to accommodate between online and offline characters can be hard. “Van den Bergh asked 4,056 individuals, ages 15 to 25, when they felt they were or weren't being genuine online or logged off, with companions, folks, accomplices or employers.” Through this research he found,
In our age of endless involvement in social media, we often see that people know online aren’t what they seem. Some social media users don’t know that same people we follow or are friends with on Facebook are controlling the way they are being perceived by other users. It’s a new social phenomenon born online and isn’t taken noticed by the everyday users, but there had been movies and stories about it. The topic of identity on social media is being bought up more often in the worldwide conversion about what social media means to us. In the essay “Impression Management on Facebook and Twitter” by Annalise Sigona seeks to inform readers and social media users about the unknowns about the impression and the way user present themselves in social media. When reading this essay, I was introduced to new term, and something I had vague understanding for.
“Nothing is perfect.” Though social media brings us uncountable convenience, there is a trade-off with the convenience. Due to the advanced technology we have, social media has become part of our life, which it means that social media could determine our sociability. In Peggy Orenstein’s “I Tweet, Therefore I Am,” though she praises Tweeter for its convenience, at the same time, she also worries that “(Tweeter) makes the greasepaint permanent, blurring the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self.” Since we don’t care about who we talk to, we might act abnormally due to our feelings, and
Erving Goffman created a concept, called dramaturgical analysis, to compare social interaction to performing on stage. He believes that people show different sides of themselves depending on who they’re around and the current setting. Impression management is the “process of suppressing unfavorable traits and stressing favorable ones” (90). Many people focus on making themselves look impressionable and show their best qualities when around others. Another part of social interaction is front stage which discusses what happens in peoples sight and back stage talks about the things that happen behind closed doors. In the article, “Rethinking Goffman’s Front Stage/Back Stage,” the author made me realize that anything that is posted on social media
Carr uses the example of Friedrich Nietzsche whom transfer from pen and paper to a typewriter. Many notice that Nietzsche’s writing style had also changed, reason being that “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Nietzsche explains. It is as though our own critical thinking is malleable in accordance to technology. “They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.”, Carr states as he correlates that our own innocent use of technology is our own waterloo, for it disables us of capacity to formulate our own thoughts. However, Wendell and Beavers beg to differ, however they argue a different stand point. Wendell and Beavers introduce the idea that the ability to use social media as a platform of cognitive stimulation, “There is a well-established body of evidence supporting the correlation between cognitive competence and quality pretend-play.”, the essay argues. Wendell and beavers argue that the simple access to try out different modes of self presentation are properly inhibited on Facebook, fore it “must fit somewhat with what I already am because my ‘friends’ are present to ‘call me out’ if I try to pass myself off as someone too different from whom they perceive me to be.” The supporting details, for the most part, in Wendell and Beavers’ analysis are draw from personal experiment and formatted in a way to at some degree present it in a credible way. This is also true when it comes to Car’s piece, as Carr also uses his own experience as the foundation of his own argument of the levels of toxicity technology has on our critical thinking, “my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages.” Carr explicates his concern. Both sides of the argument draw from first based ideals and it gives an intimate touch between the at hour and the reader. It gives the
Clark, W. G. and Wright, W. Aldis , ed. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Vol. 1. New York: Nelson-Doubleday
Similar to the definition of the word, the front is a part of an individual that is presented in order for others to see and is seen first. In our lives, the front stage occurs when we interact with others within public or professional settings. The personal front refers to the “expressive equipment that the audience identifies with the performers and expects them to carry with them into the setting” (Pada, 2016). The personal front includes the performer’s clothing style, gender, age, and race, posture, manner of speaking, facial expressions, and gestures.
Impression management is a social phenomenon that occurs in our daily life both consciously and unconsciously. “It is the act of presenting a favorable public image of oneself so that others will form positive judgments.” (Newman 184) Our first impressions of a person are always based on physical appearance and we compare them to the norms of our society. We can all admit to the initial meeting of a person and first noticing their age, gender, race, or other ascribed characteristics. Our cultural norms are ideas such that fat is “ugly” which are very different across societies and time. Also, impression management is an idea of how individuals interact in different social situations. “Sociologists refer to dramaturgy as the study of social interactions as theater, in which people (“actors”) project images (“play roles”) in front of others (“the audience”).” (Newman 169) This is our human need for acceptance and way of managing the impressions we give others and perform what we think people want to see. Our social life is governed by this concept but it only works with effective front-stage and back-stage separation. Our front-stage is the visible part of ourselves that we allow others to see unlike our hidden back-stage self.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Trans. Gayle Holste. Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series, 2009. Print.
Before the internet, our characteristics such as style, identity, and values were primarily exposed by our materialistic properties which psychologists define as the extended self. But people’s inferences to the idea of online self vs. offline self insisted a translation to these signals into a personality profile. In today’s generation, many of our dear possessions have been demolished. Psychologist Russell W belk suggest that: “until we choose to call them forth, our information, communications, photos, videos, music, and more are now largely invisible and immaterial.” Yet in terms of psychology there is no difference between the meaning of our “online selves” and “offline selves. They both assist us in expressing important parts of our identity to others and provide the key elements of our online reputation. Numerous scientific research has emphasized the mobility of our analogue selves to the online world. The consistent themes to these studies is, even though the internet may have possibly created an escape from everyday life, it is in some ways impersonating
For centuries, humans have used their interaction with one another to help shape outsiders' perceptions of them. Often communication experts refer to this as constructing one’s “social identity.” For many years, this projection of self-came through interpersonal communication; face-to-face communication or other forms of personal interaction. In the progress of technology, this development of one’s personal attributes has come to include photographs, letters, published and unpublished writings, and physical attributes. Many aspects of a person’s “identity” as others see it are difficult and almost impossible to define. In the modern age, such vague characteristics are both helped and hindered by using social media and the internet to “construct”
Ronk, Martha Clare, Locating the Visual in As You Like It.Shakespeare Quarterly 52, Issue 2, 2001.
This paper aims to explore the different reasons behind people having different personas in Twitter and real-life through a look at how the social networking site provides a unique opportunity for self...
The influence of rapidly growing social media, television, and the internet has taken the world by storm in recent years. Its fascinating development over the years is nothing short of remarkable when you take into account that 20 years ago, only 16 million people in the world were "online", compared to the 2 billion that roam on the internet now. Modern communications technology has now become so familiar and utterly banal, yet there is still this tingling sensation when one receives a text from a love interest on Facebook or WhatsApp. Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, is on the verge of being radically defined by social media. This essay will provide a balanced outlook on the positive and negative effects that social media have had on the behaviour and thinking on humans. The topic is a very controversial one, but the purpose of this is to help readers formulate a view on whether the arguments in this essay benefit society in general, or whether they harm the well-being of the human brain and detach us from reality.
Social media can be used in our days as a very helpful tool for many things in changing any person’s life ant attitude. It has a positive impact on the society level. These media will keep the person socially active and open to all what happened in the world. Sharing the latest news, photos, finding new friends and knowing the culture. Also, it allows for millions to keep in touch with each other and update for all the new technology. And, it helps people who have difficulties in communication with others to be more socialized and stronger and develop more confidence to feel more comfortable, protected and relaxed just sitting behind a screen. “It saved me time and money without ever requiring me to leave the house; it salvaged my social life, allowed me to conduct interviews as a reporter and kept a lifeline open to my far-flung extended family” says Leonard(231).