Contemporary social interaction: How communication technologies alter Goffman's dramaturgical model?

Nguyen Trung Kien

Abstract

The dramaturgical model in sociology was developed by Erving Goffman in his famous work “The Presentation of Self in Everyday life” published in 1959. This theoretical model views social life as a stage on which an individual plays a role of performer, trying and tries to impress audience throughout her/his show. This viewpoint is one of Goffman's substantial contributions to comprehension of social interaction in day-to-day life. However, recent advances in communication technologies, especially the diffusion of the Internet and mobile phones, have brought many significant changes to social world. Those changes have led to the demand of revising Goffman’s theory in order to better capture the nature and rules of current social phenomena. This paper aims at assessing Goffman’s dramaturgical model by examining contemporary social interaction based on recent improvement in communication technologies. Four main points in his framework including the interaction order, self, front, and backstages and frontstages are put into discussion. By reviewing recent research, the paper suggests some modifications to Goffman’s theory and leaves some questions for the future research to investigate.

Keywords

Communication technologies; dramaturgical model; Erving Goffman; the interaction order; the Internet

Full Text:

PDF

References

Bargh, J. A., McKenna, K. Y., & Fitzsimons, G. M. (2002). Can you see the real me? Activation and expression of the “true self” on the Internet. Journal of social issues, 58(1), 33-48.

Boon, S., & Sinclair, C. (2009). A world I don’t inhabit: disquiet and identity in Second Life and Facebook. Educational Media International, 46(2), 99-110.

Boyd, D. (2004). Friendster and publicly articulated social networking.

Boyd, D. (2006a). A blogger's blog: Exploring the definition of a medium. Reconstruction, 6(4).

Boyd, D. (2006b). Friends, Friendsters, and MySpace Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites. First Monday, 11(12). Retrieved from: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1418/1336

Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.

Branaman, A. (1997). Goffman's social theory. In C. Lemert & A. Branaman (Eds.), The Goffman Reader (pp. xlv-lxxxii). United Kindom: Wiley-Blackwell.

Castells, M. (2011). The rise of the network society: The information age: Economy, society, and culture (Vol. 1): Wiley-Blackwell.

Dabner, N. (2012). ‘Breaking Ground’ in the use of social media: A case study of a university earthquake response to inform educational design with Facebook. The Internet and Higher Education, 15(1), 69-78. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.06.001.

De Moor, A., & Efimova, L. (2004). An argumentation analysis of weblog conversations. Paper presented at the The 9th International Working Conference on the Language-Action Perspective on Communication Modelling (LAP 2004).

Facebook. (2012). One Billion Fact Sheet. Retrieved October 28 2012, from http://newsroom.fb.com/imagelibrary/downloadmedia.ashx?MediaDetailsID=4227&SizeId=-1

Flew, T. (2008). New media: An introduction (3rd ed.). Victoria: Oxford University Press.

Gergen, K. J. (2002). 14 The challenge of absent presence. Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance, 227.

Geser, H. (2004). Towards a sociological theory of the mobile phone: Publica.

Goffman, E. (1955). On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 213-231.

Goffman, E. (1956a). Embarrassment and social organization. American Journal of Sociology, 264-271.

Goffman, E. (1956b). The nature of deference and demeanor. American Anthropologist, 58(3), 473-502.

Goffman, E. (1957). Alienation from interaction. Human Relations.

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London, England: Penguin Books.

Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press.

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays in face to face behavior. New York: Anchor Books.

Goffman, E. (1969). Strategic interaction. Philadelphia: Unversity of Pensylvania Press.

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. New York: Harper & Row.

Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order: American Sociological Association, 1982 presidential address. American sociological review, 48(1), 1-17.

Goggin, G. (2012). New Technologies and the Media. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan.

Google. (2015). Our history in depth. Retrieved July 21, 2015, from http://www.google.com/about/company/history/

Hum, N. J., Chamberlin, P. E., Hambright, B. L., Portwood, A. C., Schat, A. C., & Bevan, J. L. (2011). A picture is worth a thousand words: A content analysis of Facebook profile photographs. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(5), 1828-1833. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2011.04.003

Jenkins, R. (2010). The 21st-century interaction order. In M. H. Jacobsen (Ed.), The contemporary Goffman (pp. 257-274).

Lampe, C. A. C., Ellison, N., & Steinfield, C. (2007). A familiar face (book): profile elements as signals in an online social network. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems.

Ling, R. (2009). The ‘Unboothed’Phone. Goffman and the Use of Mobile Communication. In M. H. Jacobsen (Ed.), The contemporary Goffman (pp. 275-292). New York: Routledge.

Macnamara, J. (2010). The 21st century media (r) evolution: Emergent communication practices: Peter Lang Pub Incorporated.

Manning, P., & Smith, G. (2010). Symbolic Interactionism. In A. Elliott (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Social Theory (pp. 37-55). London & New York: Routledge.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Miller, C. R., & Shepherd, D. (2004). Blogging as social action: A genre analysis of the weblog. In S. A. L. Gurak, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Ed.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs. Retrieved from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogging_as_social_action_a_genre_analysis_of_the_weblog.html.

Miller, H. (1995). The presentation of self in electronic life: Goffman on the Internet. Paper presented at the Embodied knowledge and virtual space conference.

Miniwatts Marketing Group. (2012). World Internet Usage and Population Statistics June 30, 2012. Retrieved June 1 2013, from Miniwatts Marketing Group http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Miniwatts Marketing Group. (2015). World Internet Usage and Population Statistics December 31, 2014. Retrieved July 21, 2015, from Miniwatts Marketing Group http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Murthy, D. (2012). Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media: Theorizing Twitter. Sociology, 46(6), 1059-1073. doi: 10.1177/0038038511422553

Nadkarni, A., & Hofmann, S. G. (2012). Why Do People Use Facebook? Pers Individ Dif, 52(3), 243-249. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.11.007

Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., & Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary? Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work.

Nosko, A., Wood, E., & Molema, S. (2010). All about me: Disclosure in online social networking profiles: The case of FACEBOOK. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(3), 406-418.

Reich, S. M. (2010). Adolescents' sense of community on myspace and facebook: a mixedmethods approach. Journal of Community Psychology, 38(6), 688-705. doi: 10.1002/jcop.20389

Rettie, R. (2009). Mobile phone communication: Extending Goffman to mediated interaction. Sociology, 43(3), 421-438.

Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier: MIT press.

Robards, B., & Bennett, A. (2011). MyTribe: Post-subcultural Manifestations of Belonging on Social Network Sites. Sociology, 45(2), 303-317. doi: 10.1177/0038038510394025

Shakaspeare, W. (1822a). As You Like It. In W. Dodd (Ed.), The Beauties of Shakspeare: (pp. 6-13). London: Frederick Warne and Co.

Shakaspeare, W. (1822b). King John. In W. Dodd (Ed.), The Beauties of Shakspeare: (pp. 93-104). London: Frederick Warne and Co.

Vasalou, A., Joinson, A. N., & Courvoisier, D. (2010). Cultural differences, experience with social networks and the nature of “true commitment” in Facebook. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68(10), 719-728. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.06.002

White, C. (2011). Social media, crisis communication, and emergency management. Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis Group.

Whitty, M. T. (2008). Revealing the ‘real’me, searching for the ‘actual’you: Presentations of self on an internet dating site. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(4), 1707-1723.

Zhao, S., Grasmuck, S., & Martin, J. (2008). Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5), 1816-1836. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2008.02.012.

5 (1) 2015

Contemporary social interaction: How communication technologies alter Goffman's dramaturgical model?

Abstract

Keywords

Full Text:

References