With the advent of various social media platforms, there has been a great increase in the amount of content that is put forth on the internet. Millennials, GenZ, and Boomers alike use social media platforms to not just post updates about what they are up to in their professional lives, but also to share the exotic places they travel to and further even what they do there. Most of us use apps like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to share pictures, conversations, and even our thoughts and opinions about everything ranging from social issues to political issues. In a way, we are presenting ourselves through pictures, videos, and words (different mediums of multimedia) on social media platforms for our followers and viewers to see and perceive us in a certain way.

Erving Goffman’s theory provides a framework for understanding how people use social media in the current social context. Erving Goffman, a prominent sociologist, developed a social theory of symbolic interaction which took the form of dramaturgical analysis, beginning with his magnum opus, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), in which he talks about the social construction of self in a world he considers to be a stage, with all men and women merely being the players. We can apply some of the key concepts that Goffman developed to unveil how social media is a thriving space for people to present the various roles and identities they present to the online world in more ways than one. According to Goffman, we play several different roles and parts, which are determined by the situation we find ourselves in.

We present a different version of ourselves depending on whom we are interacting with. This can be witnessed when we meet someone with whom we had an argument which would in turn make us uncomfortable or awkward. In such a situation, we find ourselves to be reluctantly playing two very different and inconsistent roles. A similar situation can also arise when we encounter people from vastly different social settings and must figure out which version of ourselves should we put on display.  In a lot of instances, seeing comes before words.

When we go out to attend social events, we try to strike a conversation with people based on mutual interests and we try to gather as much information about them to understand the situation. In such a scenario, everything we usually say to please others is in line with what they conform to. Herein, the idea is to make the other person feel comfortable. When we do this, we are constantly trying to get positive attention or ‘positive gaze’ from those we are bounded by.

Since the internet has become ubiquitous and participative, more and more people are going online to become a part of the ever-expanding social circle and capital. We are constantly seeking social approval in terms of how we appear online, and how we present ourselves to the digital world, to expand our circles of influence and build trust among those connections. The presentation of self has become extremely important in describing differences in activity and meaning of participation online.

Social media users these days are acutely conscious of how their personal information is presented on their profiles and handles. For example, the security settings on Instagram allow us to select if we want our profile to be public or private and we can even hide our stories from certain people. This is a very common occurrence amongst most people on social media platforms as they want to filter out content for different sets of people. Our lives are structured based on the ‘internet’ and how we wish to present ‘ourselves’.

In this context, Goffman’s distinction between front stage and backstage is relevant.  The front stage can be defined as “the self-presentation maintained by the individual to project an intended definition of the situation in executing a particular role performance”. The front stage has little room for error or poor behaviour. On the other hand, backstage is defined as “when one is relaxing and engaged in leisure activities” or the unedited version of oneself where they can fully relax and not worry about their role in society (Goffman, 1959).

When we think about front-stage roles in one’s digital life, we can think about the photos we post on our public pages with the most viewers. These are edited photos that show them at a person’s best moments, but they don’t show the mess that occurred before the photo or the drama that happened after. When we post our photos online, we want everyone to admire our lives and we can a certain extent define how other people perceive us. You can also think of these posts as demonstrating roles that we believe we are supposed to portray. One might now show their true self because of the fear of going against their intended role in society. Instagram in this case acts as the front stage and we try to give the best possible impression.

Moreover, if we talk about high-profile individuals on Twitter, such as politicians and film personalities, every tweet they craft is in sync with the elements of ‘performance’. The setting, appearance, and the way they tweet must be very consistent and coherent in terms of the content so that it is comprehended by the audience as being very authentic. The audience identifies with the public figure because of the authenticity his/her mask reflects on them and forged through their agenda. Building on Goffman’s theory of the presentation of self, it seems like on a platform like Twitter an actual person delivers one persona in different ways, performs on one stage (Twitter) and reaches out to all kinds of audiences. To avoid inappropriateness of any form, several celebrities hire PR professionals to manage their social media handles to make sure that they live up to their ‘masks’.

Social media has also led to the emergence of a new social world which enables and allows people to have multiple identities. It allows people to represent themselves in more ways than one. Goffman’s argument holds even though social media platforms have become as ubiquitous and it has given space to us for creating more versions of ourselves. Social media allows us to unveil parts of our identities which otherwise wouldn’t see the light of the day and we tailor ourselves based on who we want the version of ourselves to be seen. However, in the context of social media, we are not always ‘performing’ ourselves in front of our closest family members and friends. Social media is a new stage for a lot of us; it is also a medium for us to say things that can be hard to say otherwise.

References:

Goffman, E. (1959). Presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.

Manago, A., Graham, M., Greenfield, P., & Salimkhan, G. (2008). Self-presentation and gender on MySpace. Journal Of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29(6), 446-458. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2008.07.001

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Upali Bhattacharya is a Sociology graduate and has been working in the space of social impact and education. She is currently a PhD student at the Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech.