6.2 Audience Segregation: Facebook privacy functions as tools for
6.2.2 Tag review and involuntary performance: preventive practice
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backgrounds tend to share their opinion but limit the posts inside Muslim circles. In these cases, the posts become a back stage that keeps away non-Muslim audience.
The function of custom friend list allows us a certain fluidity to manage the confines of front stages and back stages. The users can adjust the confines anytime. If they do not feel like paying attention to the confines, they may rather choose not to perform certain images with risks.
6.2.2 Tag review and involuntary performance: preventive practice for protecting the confine of stage
The second of privacy tools that Facebook provides to allow users to segregate their audience is tag reviewing. The tagging function allows users to share common activities by tagging someone on their posts. When a user tags a friend on his/her post, the posts pop out on the timelines both of the user and of person who is tagged. Tag reviewing, on the other hand, gives the tagged users the choice of whether having these posts showed on their timeline or not.
I have addressed how the interviewees assumed the possible images presented by their own posts and comment and how they adjust their performance. In these processes, they are at least giving performance on their own initiatives. However, the tagging function makes it possible that their Facebook friends now can see some contents that they don’t feel like sharing with all the audiences. Goffman has
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mentioned a similar phenomenon which resembles the tagging situation as inopportune intrusions. Inopportune intrusions mean that a random person intrudes into a scene, or a back stage, and sees the performance that is not supposed to be seen by him/her. Yet in the case of tagging, the interviewees’ offline activities become an involuntary performance in front of their audiences. The user who tagged out other people did not only give performance on his/her own stage but is also intruding others’
stages and dragging them into a performance without asking permission. That is to say, the random person does not intrude into scenes and become an audience. S/he also breaks the confines of stages and performs on other performers’ stage. The function of tagging can turn a post into a shared performance/stage between a user and the person being tagged. The involuntary performance may cause damages on the impressions other performers have carefully maintained.
All of the interviewees adopt the function of tag reviewing to protect the confines of their Facebook stage from being broken by friends. For the interviewees, tag reviewing is an essential tool to prevent unwanted content from showing up their timelines. One of the purposes is to maintain the image of a self-disciplined Muslim.
As the interviewee Hazim, whose aunt has considered his selfies inappropriate, said:
“I started to use the ‘tag reviewing’ after my aunt told me not to post my selfies with girlfriends.”
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All of the interviewees agreed that they employ tag reviewing to avoid the damage on the self-disciplined image about gender norms and other religious disciplines. Even though they know what kind of contents may violate the disciplines and manage not to post them, their friends who are not Muslims may tag them in the posts and cause intrusions on their stages.
However, other interviewees also put emphasis on all kinds of embarrassment that could be caused by being tagged. As Basim said:
“I don’t mind being tagged but I still use tag reviewing because my wife cares whether she looks good in the photos…It has nothing to do with the hijab, just appearance.”
And Abbas said:
“I would let everyone see the activities in the Mosque hoping they feel more curious about our culture …But I just don’t want my personal life to be so ’public’ to everyone. There is no need to do that.”
In these cases, the interviewees employ tag reviewing for managing their performances from more than one aspect. Yet, no matter how they mostly pay attention to the self-disciplined Muslim image, the appearance or the privacy
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boundaries, the core purpose of the usage of tag reviewing is to maintain the confines among their own back stage, front stage and other performers’ stages.
The broken confines do not only mean that the audiences on their timelines would see unexpected performances, it also means that they are forced to give performance in front of other peoples’ audiences. Ameenah talked about the experience of being tagged and being invited into a discussion which she refused to participate in:
“I didn’t respond to the question directly because it involves a great amount of interdisciplinary knowledge that I don’t have. I believe that when people only know one Muslim, that’s me in this case, in their entire life, my opinion would definitely affect their impressions on Muslims. I am responsible for what I say.”
For Ameenah, the tagging as an invitation to expressing her opinion is apparently an unexpected incident that makes her consider the strategy of impression management carefully. She refuses the invitation in order to maintain her image as sources of correct information and in consideration of the image of the whole Muslim community. The interviewees’ strategic usage of tag reviewing once again indicates that while the confines of performing stages are no longer sharply distinguished, users have to be sensitive to the shift of their roles, stages and performances on SNSs at all times in order to achieve impression management.
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