By: Grace Westling
In our lecture, we discussed the construction of self and world in everyday communication. Where we learned to ask questions of who am I? What am I? Who is consuming it? But, the last question has become the most important and prevalent now with social media.
A theory that stuck out most to me is interactionism. Where an individual’s meaning depends on the social relations they are in. For example, a professor in a lecture hall is just a professor. But seeing your professor on the tube, they are just any other person on the tube. The meaning of individuals is through the interactions we have with them.
However social media allows people to have multiple personas on different platforms. Impression management, it allows people to have a “front stage” which is for everyone. While the “backstage” is really only for your true self. We interact between the front and the backstage with the idea of the best possible impression. Social media gives the ability for people to have multiple “backstages”.
An example of this is how politicians use social media platforms to portray different forms of their backstages. In hopes, they will reach more people and have an influence over them. Vice-President Kamala Harris is a beaming example of this. On TikTok, Harris (and her campaign team) make funny videos to reach Gen Z. While her Instagram shows her presidential campaign. Putting up videos of recent interviews, campaigning for Americans to vote, as well as her policies. But, opposing platforms such as Donald Trump’s tweets represent a different backstage of Harris. Spreading disinformation, one time alluding to the fact of Harris not even being a US citizen. Even though she was born in Oakland, CA.
Whether it is creating backstages for ourselves or others, once it is on social media it will never leave us. Sherry Turkle makes the point that when we are with our phones, we are never truly alone. She is accurate with that point since on our phones there are multiple versions of others and ourselves. She makes the point of how you can change your identity or create multiple on social media, yet they will never leave you.
With impression management and social media, all audiences are under one stage. Media today is no longer a medium to us, it has become a space. Where we interact with one another while not being ourselves some of the time. Face-to-face interaction has become less important with the development of social media. Some people even meet their partners on a dating app, Tinder or Hinge for example.
But, while we can use social media to interact with each other. Being ourselves is still important since that is all we have at the end of the day.
