Digital literacy 5: Making an impression

If all the world is a stage, I demand better lighting! I also want someone to prompt me when I forget my lines. Some better costumes would be nice. Oh, and more exotic scenery? And while we're at it, how about a better script - one that more accurately reflects my true feelings....

When William Shakespeare wrote those immortal lines ... (the ones about all of life being a stage and the people being the actors on it ... not all the other stuff above. That was just me sounding off) he was implying that not only is life transitory, but that each of us performs several roles throughout our lives. It also implies an audience of some kind. I infer from this that each of us also plays some roles reluctantly, possibly because we are constrained to act in ways that sometimes do not accurately represent the real 'me'. But what is the real 'me'? Sometimes that changes with context doesn't it? Or how I'm feeling today? Or perhaps it changes depending on my relationships with the people who are in close proximity to me while I am acting out that particular role?

The social anthropologist Erving Goffman tried to address these questions when he proposed his 'dramaturgy' model of sociology - his interpretation of the presentation of self in every day life. For Goffman, human behaviour is very much dependent on time, space and audience. By audience, he meant those who are observing the actor, or with whom s/he interacts with. In essence, Goffman argued that the way each of us present ourselves to others is carefully managed around the cultural values, norms, and expectations that are commonly held by actor and audience. Watch how a comedian, stage actor or pop singer manipulates their audience and you will see how much they desire to be liked, accepted and paid attention to. According to Goffman, the way each of us respresents ourselves to others involves some kind of role playing (self representation) and can also involve scripts (speech patterns) props and costumes, just like an actor does for a stage performance. Such management of impression is common to all humans and is used to form connections and gain influence with others.

The rapid emergence of digital media and the phenomenal growth in popularity of self broadcasting and publishing through social media, asks some new questions about how people represent themselves in virtual spaces. Sherry Turkle was one of the first people to conduct detailed studies into 'Life on Screen' by observing behaviour in multiple user domains (MUDs). Published in 1995, at the early edge of the Web, Turkle showed how many people employ multiple identities in virtual worlds, and that in some case these become as real to them as their identity in 'real life'. Her studies led Sherry Turkle to propose that new forms of personal identity are emerging as a result of prolonged interaction with others through technology - that our identities are increasingly multiple and decentred.

I won't go into details here, but there is further evidence to suggest that people portray themselves differently depending on the social media platform they use - and through text and other media. This may mean the same person using different avatars (images or animated characters used to represent real objects), usernames and forms of interaction, to suit the different norms and social expectations of the communities that frequent those various environments. In the context of my initial metaphor, some social media have better 'lighting' and 'scenery' than others. The audiences change, some more friendly than others. But how much does the actor actually change, and to what extent do they manage their impressions to suit the expectations of their audiences? And how much should each of us pay attention to the way we manage our online impression - our digital identity? Cue the opening music - positions, please.... Next week: Content creation.

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Making an impression by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.