The construction of identity in the digital world has been a theory conceptualised since the 1930s. Personally, I find this really intriguing knowing roughly 100 years ago there were philosophers predicting that the media would carry most of our conversations.
Alfred Schutz was a philosopher known for his belief that humans attempt to typify everything meaning they need to label and categorize things to better understand them within the context of society. Schutz’s theory on the social world can be divided into two spheres: the world of consociates and the world of contemporaries.
The world of consociates is being face to face and having a conversation with someone without any distractions, you are present and in the moment. It is a core social experience, classified as direct communication. The world of contemporaries is being in contact with someone from afar, such as sending letters or texts. Although he believed the social world has two spheres he indicated some caution between the two turning into one, due to the media.
As early as the 1930s, Schutz used an example saying ‘imagine having a face-to-face conversation that turns into a phone call followed by an exchange of letters followed by a third-party exchange of messages.’ He feared the consociates would turn into contemporaries and we would lose sense of reality. Which is exactly what is happening in our day and age. Unfortunately, we have relied so much on the media we sometimes forget to think on our own. Schutz believes the media plays a role in constructing people’s reality which makes the social world more mediated, making people become less authentic.
The social world right now has become much more complex since Schutz’s theories, considering he thought of them in the 1930s. One of the ways his theories have developed is that social media has shifted the balance of direct communication to mediated communication. It is contradictory however, because social media could be considered as both direct and mediated communication. Video calls are a way in which you are able to be in direct contact with someone across the world.
The second development is the inputs of past communications being included. We are able to reply late to someone, whether it is an email or a text from days ago, it is a way of mediated communication as you have time to think and respond instead of having a regular conversation face to face. Schutz feared human interaction would become digitalised and more ingenuine. With the rise of trends in social media, it is hard to find true authentic individuals.
The final development is the availability of media as a current resource in face-to-face communication. Most conversations happening in real-time usually include a reference from the media. The incorporation of media during a real conversation limits the other person’s use of imagination or ability to form an original thought.
The integration of all these developments in the digital world turn Schutz’s theory into a fact. Today, our communicative behaviour is thoroughly interwoven with various media. For example, family dinners used to be filled with stories but nowadays most families use their phones. The point is not that direct communication is becoming less important, but that in order to sustain its importance we now require continuous mediated coordination, it is no longer something that comes easily.
Resources:
Hepp, A. (2016) ‘2.3 Media and the Communicative Construction of the Social World’, in The mediated construction of Reality. Chicester: Polity Press.
Jan (2014) Jan, Tag: social construction | Basic Research On the Self. Available at: https://www.janhenderson.com/self/tag/social-construction/ (Accessed: 10 November 2023).
Admin (2018) Conversation: A modern-day struggle, Jerry Acuff. Available at: https://www.jerryacuff.com/conversation-a-modern-day-struggle/ (Accessed: 10 November 2023).
