Tag Archives: Goffman

deleting Facebook accounts

Posted on February 8, 2011 by davika.singh

In our last class, we talked about how Facebook affects us, some more than others in many different ways.  For many, Facebook is an easy way to keep in contact with old friends, make new friends, take part in new activities and for some, killing time : ). This class in particular captured my attention because we focused on how the life we live and the life on Facebook are two totally and separate things.  It’s basically, someone living in two different worlds.  From chapter VI, it mentions that we tend to manage the impression we show to others with caution.  We try to impress, play different roles, try to expose our lives to others and also in a way, to somewhat sell “ourselves”.

For some, after a while Facebook tends to be a pain and we try to remove it from our lives by deleting the account.  In the past, it was a simple thing to do but as of recent, there are many different and complicated steps one must undergo in order as to do so.  Lately, it was clear that there is no such thing as deleting the account, but instead, you are temporary putting your account on lock, until you log back in and then it will be reactivated in an instant.  Also, for those who spent the time to remove their account, it is also obvious that there are many different websites that by simply typing in your name, one can find each and every account they have created on various websites.  With this said and done, we all can say that removing personal information online, is not as easy as it looks or they said it would be.

Posted in Assignment 1 | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Knowing Your Audience?

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Andrew McKinney

A Cautionary Tale:  As we will read later in the semester, our social media presence is both a way for us to have an easier time keeping track of  the world, but also a way for the world to have a much easier time keeping track of us.  Stacey Snyder, the “drunken pirate” pictured above, is often cited as one of the first instances of social media usage actually ruining someone’s career.  This article details Snyder’ s dismissal from a college student teaching program and the denial of her teaching certificate all due to her posting this picture with the caption “drunken pirate” to her Myspace profile.  Snyder sued but her suit was eventually dismissed on the grounds that the post was not a matter of public concern and was therefore not a First Amendment issue.  This incident brings up a number of issues relevant to our course (the difference between what is public and what is private being the most obvious), but I find Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis of social interaction to be quite applicable to this particular situation.  When presenting oneself in everyday online life, the ability to know, and therefore control in someone, one’s audience is increasing difficult.  As Facebook’s privacy settings make more and more of our profiles “public” and anyone with internet access can google your name, the audience witnessing your online performance is undergoing exponential growth.  The stages that we perform on are changing dramatically.  Is it time to come start changing our performances as the audience gets bigger and bigger while acquiring greater and greater access to the our everyday lives?   Or will the audience become more accustomed to witnessing what has traditionally been a part of what Goffman calls the backstage?  Has it become impossible for us to know our audience while the audience itself knows us even better? What kind of defensive or protective practices are possible when we don’t even know who or what  is watching us?

Posted in Professorial Musings | Tagged , , | 13 Comments