Mat wandered over earlier and we had a chat about a minor, but thought-provoking, incident on Twitter which occurred yesterday.
One of my followers, who shall remain nameless, said something unspeakably cock-eyed and stupid, throbbing with bias and paranoia, and just…wrong. I found this incredibly irritating, and began to tap out my angry response, complete with ‘@’, questioning the logic behind his verbal crime. But I didn’t hit enter, because I value my followers and my blog readers. In other words, I engaged in a small but not insignificant impression management operation.
Upon explaining this to Mat, his response was thus: “Are normal people learning to conduct themselves in a public way online?”
According to my list of qualifications, I’m a sociologist – and I’ve long been fascinated by the work of Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman. Goffman’s best known work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, covered this very topic. He devised the dramaturgical analogy to frame the presentation of self and the division between public and private, or front and backstage.
The ‘front’ is where we carry out a social performance:
“[The front is] that part of individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance. Front, then, is the expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance.”
It’s our public performance. More commonly associated with figures in the public eye, Goffman argues that we all portray ourselves differently in public, even if that public is just one person with whom one is ostensibly comfortable.
Right, that’s enough social theory. How does this map onto our social media lives?
Despite one or two or three or four cases of utter stupidity, people are learning to put on a performance online. We’re increasingly being ourselves – or performances thereof – rather than talking monikers, but we’re still guarded about what we say.
As fits Goffman’s framework, this is partly down to a conscious approach. In the professional world, we know that we’re better off holding back on certain things. We should cut down on the swears, not say anything we wouldn’t say to or in front of a client and – as I’ve said a million times – just be careful. There is also the unconscious side, which affects our presentation of self in all walks of life.
‘Customer’ relations?
For bloggers – and by that I mean bloggers, like me, with an unrelated day job – there’s an added element. We have to watch our step not only on the grounds that we are responsible adults who could be sacked or embarrassed by a faux-pas, but also that we are, inherently, community managers/maintainers. And that was Mat’s point: normal people now have abnormal tasks.
Had I gone in all guns blazing on my foolish follower yesterday, fully committing to the battle with my opinion and my less-than-friendly way with words, I’d have lost him as a follower. I also happen to know that I’d have lost some other followers as a result and, probably, lost of a few readers of my blog. And that’s even before he’d reacted, which could have resulted in my being ‘outed’ by him on Twitter as a moody and thin-skinned blogger. I’d have been facing a mini-crisis.
We are never truly private, according to Goffman. But the way in which we behave publicly has evolved as a result of social media. Even within that sphere, different types of people have different social requirements and different approaches.
I’ve shown you mine – do you hold back online? Why?
Twitter
I’ve actually found the opposite. Being fairly honest with people online has forced me to be more honest with people offline to the extent now that if I type something about someone they can bet that I would say it to their face as well.
Like what Craig’s saying. I often see (and comment upon) a massive difference between “personal” and “professional” behaviour. Roughly parsed, and in many I think that “professional behaviour” can read as “behaving like a po-faced spokesbot clone.” I welcome the fact that people’s Facebook pages and Twitter streams make them seem human and individual. That they expose side interests that I may share.
But I also think that the days of “On the Internet no-one knows you’re a dog” are over. Our online personas are rich and important part of our real-world selves.
So I reckon, with Chris, that more and more people are going to get used to living their lives as public figures — meaning that they have an audience whom they don’t know, and who may not share the same views as they do, and who will be less forgiving as a result.
Also the fact, that our actions and responses are available for an unknown length of time makes me restrain my reaction and think about them twice. Even if you change your mind afterwards for some reason or didn’t consider something in the first place – your reaction, which is part of the online-you, stays available and often can’t be removed or edited anymore.
Great points made by all. The longevity of our actions is certainly a factor which adds to the public sphere.
REALLY great post. I am big fan of Goffman as well.
Thanks! As I said, it was inspired by Mat but I thought I’d put my sociologist’s spin on it.
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