2.2 Theoretical Background: Dramaturgical Approach…
2.2.1 The Presentation of the Self and Social Network Sites…
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Therefore, the question that needs to be asked is how the younger generations of Taiwanese Muslims regard their identity that has gradually formulated over the past few decades. If they embrace the new identity of Taiwanese Muslim, how would they present it to the non-Muslim Taiwan society? It is therefore the aim of this study to look into the self-presentation of their identity as Taiwanese Muslims or under any other forms of identities.
2.2 Theoretical Background: Dramaturgical Approach
2.2.1 The Presentation of the Self and Social Network Sites
Erving Goffman (1959) developed a series of concepts highlighting the idea that individuals perform their identity. He used theatrical metaphors to explain how people present an ideal image to others rather than their authentic selves (Hogan, 2010). The social life of individuals is considered a stage upon which their every single move reflects certain roles or characteristics of the individuals. People who participate in social occasions are the audiences who define the different roles that an individual should play in front of them. That is to say, an individual has to be aware of the gaze from the audience and to present desirable images according to the social conventions s/he observes and deems to be suitable for the audience and the occasion (Bullingham and Vasconcelos, 2013).
Another key concept of Goffman’s theory is that individuals try to maintain consistent
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
performances in the face of particular audiences within a given period. This continuous presence allows individuals to selectively hide or reveal details. The process is referred to as “impression management.” A performance, otherwise termed
“activity” by Goffman, always occurs in specific settings. He used the dramaturgical terms “front stage” and “back stage” to distinguish between the situations where people are expected to present normalized self and occasions where they are not. How to play a role perfectly is defined by the situations, the audiences and other performers in the same team rather than the performer himself alone. All participants of any given setting help to define what role and personality have to be presented by the performers. In order to control the information given during performances, the team would carefully select their members and choose to give the performance in front of an appropriate audience to make sure that they present ideal images.
According to Goffman’s approach, the presentation of individuals equals their self.
Individuals are always observing the occasions they are participating in. People ought to be aware of the regulations existing in the situation and to decide on an appropriate role to play. The presentation thus becomes the desired self for both performer and audience. It should be noted that the self isn’t the cause of presentation. On the contrary, the presented self is an outcome of interactions between the performer, the team, and the audience. Performers always act in accordance with the information and impression s/he acquires from other participants of the activity while others also interact with the performer based on the continuous impression s/he gives. People
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
tend to see the presentation of performers as their real self or the real self of the team.
The dramaturgical approach is considered a useful perspective for understanding online self-presentation (Hogan, 2010) even though the original approach applies to interpersonal communication. Although technology-mediated communication such as conversation via telephone can be a stage upon which performers can listen to each other’s responses, the interactive process provides little room for hiding or revealing detailed information of the self. The advent of the Internet has changed everything, including the way we communicate with each other; the new technology furthermore allows us to transcend time-space boundaries. Today, the frequency that communication occurs on the Internet may be no less than that of face-to-face communication. The stage of presentation has also expanded from daily life interaction to online space. In the WEB2.0 online environment, individuals are allowed to interact using virtual identities through which they are able to present themselves as whoever they want. Online identities have generally been considered as pseudo or half-truth, but the interactions and the new relationships among masked users are real and are certainly influencing how users think and behave (Jiang, 2010).
Early studies of online identities were mostly focused on identity presentation in anonymous environment such as chatrooms and Bulletin Boards. In these scenarios, people perform roles that are detached from the real self and manage to build different characters and identities that are consistent with the parts of the self not desirable in offline stages (Huang 2002; Hsueh 2001). Grasmuck, Martin & Zhao (2009) also
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
found that people are more likely to reveal their hidden negative personalities in anonymous settings.
However, the online world also has drastically shifted from anonymous environment to more nonymous ones due to the prevalence of social network sites (SNSs). As defined by Boyd (2006), SNSs are online website systems on which individuals are allowed to (1) create personal profiles that are public or semi-public in a certain format, (2) establish lists of other users that the individuals share social connections with, and (3) browse other users’ profiles and lists of connections within the systems.
While several terms in the public sphere refer to the same systems, Boyd and Ellison (2007) specifically choose network instead of networking or other terms to describe the system. They indicated that the term networking puts emphasis on new relationships between strangers while the systems mostly enable individuals to navigate previously existing social networks, i.e., users mainly use SNSs to communicate with family, friends and acquaintances they already know in real-world social networks. For instance, Facebook started within the Harvard University as an extra platform in the offline social life of its students. Every early-stage user had to register with their Harvard email address so that they are confirmed to be a Harvard student or alumni. With full assurance of user identity, early users did not need to worry about safety when revealing their real names on the system (Shafie, Nayan &
Osman, 2012). This makes the SNSs a platform on which we have to present images that are at least consistent with the self in offline life. Although new users are more
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
likely to use pseudo name as Facebook gradually acquired greater popularity, there are other popular SNSs that do not require users to show their real names, such as Twitter, instagram and many others; most users, however, usually still befriend people they already know in the offline world in the initial stages of using a SNS (Boyd, 2012).
Thus, individuals are no longer able to create various new identities in the world of SNSs. People are now finding that, even on SNSs, they face people they already know offline and are obliged to give performances to family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. As noted by Boyd (2008), the default structure of SNSs usually assumes that individuals are at the center of the public stage and that every piece of content they produce is for the purpose of conveying messages to members of the public within their networks. As a result, the social boundaries bound to physical world disappear on SNSs. The overlapping of audiences, termed as “context collapse,”
and the obscurity between front stage and back stage leading to increasing tensions for SNSs users (Binder, Howes & Sutcliffe, 2009) because users are unable to decide upon the most appropriate form of performance to present in front of so many different groups of audiences.