Social media as a digital stage

“It is not theatre that is able to imitate life;

it is social life that is designed as a continuous performance and,

because of this, there is a link between theatre and life.”

(Eco 1997,107-117)

Introduction

In the new public spaces of the digital social platforms, people more and more often

meet, communicate, interact, inter-define themselves, and as Daphne Dragona

observes “while they are being creative and productive” at the same time “they spy

and they are being spied” (Dragona 2017). Inside a social media environment people

often make friends, share opinions and sometimes try to find common points of

reference. Most of the time they participate in networks such as YouTube, Facebook

or Instagram making their presence visible by uploading photos, videos or comments

in order to “share beliefs and experiences, to communicate and connect and – above

all – to form and support their own subjectivity” (Dragona 2017).

It is clear from the beginning that social media can be a potential space for

someone to stage him-/herself. The process of self-staging has been mentioned by

many scholars from a lot of different fields such as anthropology, sociology,

psychology, and theatre and performance studies, and often has been related to the

notion of ‘performance’. Moreover, the notion of performance is related to notions

such as ‘development’, ‘social communication’ and ‘self-representation’. In this essay

I will focus on the notions of ‘performance’ as they are given by both Erving
Goffman and Umberto Eco who recognize to it the potential of conscious choices of

self-representation, including aspects such as form and content.

Concerning these two notions, my aim in this paper is to reflect upon the

characteristic features that can make our participation in social media to be considered

as performative. To this end, I will divide the text in two parts. In the first part I will

attempt to make a brief reference to what, according to Ruth E. Page, are the main

characteristic features of social media environments (Page 2012) and furthermore I

will try to explain how the notions of Goffman and Eco about ‘performance’ can be

applied in such environments. In the second part, I will attempt to make a more

specific map that will describe how the structure of social media can transform the

users to what Laura Robinson calls “cyberperformers” (Robinson 2017).

PART 1: Approaching the notion of ‘performance’

Social media environments

The social web, commonly known as web 2.0, began to develop itself in the decade of

1990, and social media became mainstream internet activities in the first decade of the

21th century. As Ruth E. Page notifies in her book Stories and Social Media

“examples of social media include (but are not limited to) discussion forums, blogs,

wikis, podcasting, social network sites, video sharing and microblogging” (Page

2012).

In the same book she attempts to provide some of the main characteristic

features of social media and define them as “collaborative, dialogic, emergent,

personalized and context-rich environments” (Page 2012). She characterizes them as

“collaborative” because of their aim to make people participate and connect with each

other. She underlines “they are experienced not as isolated pages but more as shared

spaces that enable collective contributions in the form of content, comment and edits”

(Page 2012). She defines them as “dialogic” because their collaborative nature makes

them the ideal space for dialogue. Then, she refers to them as “emergent” because

their interactions “appears in an episodic form as consequences of messages develop

over time and draw attention to the processes of storytelling, rather than focusing on a

discrete narrative product”. Finally, she argues that they are “personalized” and

“context-rich” because they are designed in such a way that the process of consuming

and producing social media can be personalized on the one hand, while on the other

hand all their above characteristics contribute to context-rich environments.

Concerning these features, I am going to relate social media environments to

Goffman’s definition of performance.

Goffman’s notion of performance in social media

In his book The Presentation Of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman defines

performance as “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked

by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some

influence on the observers”. According to this notion, performance seems to have the

following specific characteristics: acting (it includes the notion of “activity”),

engaging (“continuous presence” is necessary), speculating (it is an activity that takes

place “before a particular set of observers”) and interacting (what the actor does “has

some influence on the observers”), but in his book, Goffman seems to imply that the

actor is also influenced by the presence of the observers. Oxford Dictionaries define

social media as: “Websites and applications that enable users to create and share

content or to participate in social networking” (English Oxford Living Dictionary

2017). Let us see what happens if we attempt to explore the social media environment

according to Goffman’s the notion of ‘performance’ above.

It is clear from the beginning that social media are environments which

provoke the user to be an actor who creates content. Moreover, this content has to be

shared, which means that social media demand the presence of an audience and thus

create the circumstances for speculating. Finally, participating in a “social network”

also demands engaging and interacting, as the users are inside the network as long as

they are digitally present, and as in order to be present they have to interact with other

users inside the digital environment. It seems that, according to Goffman, social

media environments fulfill all the requirements of a performance.

Eco’s notion of theatrical performance in social media

Some years later, in his article “Semiotics of Theatrical Performance,” gives his own

definition about theatrical performance: “A human body, along with its

conventionally recognizable properties, surrounded by or supplied with a set of

objects, inserted within a physical space, stands for something else to a reacting

audience. In order to do so, it has been framed within a sort of performative situation

that establishes that it has to be taken as a sign. From this moment on, the curtain is

raised” (Eco 1997, 117).

If we try to apply Eco’s notion about theatrical performance in social media,

things become more complicated. Eco’s notion is constructed in terms of physicality

(“human body”) and refers strictly to the analogue world (“physical space”).

However, I found many common characteristics between the way Eco describes the
function of a performance and the way that social media environments function. This

is the reason why I will attempt to transfer Eco’s notion in the digital world of social

web, known also as Web 2.0.

I will begin with the notion of “space” in Eco’s definition in order to elaborate.

In social media, physical space is replaced by a digital space, which can be

understood in terms of bits and bytes. Everything that gets in this space needs to be

translated into a digital code, which includes the “human body”, its “recognizable

properties”, the “sets of objects” with which it is surrounded or supplied, and the

“reacting audience”. In the digital space of social media, the “human body” is

translated to a personal page or a personal account which can be seen from a selected

group of users. This page or account belongs to the individual user and its content

could be considered as its “recognizable properties”, since the content identifies the

digital ontology of the individual. Furthermore, every personal page or account is

surrounded by a set of digital graphics and supplied with a set of applications which

can both be considered as a set of objects that enable the user to design his/her page

and also to interact with other users. Later on in this paper, I will explain the function

of these applications and the potential that it gives the user in order to express him-

/herself. Finally, the “reacting audience”, as has already been mentioned, is translated

to a group of other users, who can interact through their personal page by using the

same applications. Participation and interaction can also be considered as main

characteristics of the social media environment.

 Social media and the performative situation

We have already seen how the analogue characteristics in Umberto Eco’s notion can

be translated to the digital space of social media. It remains to see how the

“performative situation that establishes that it (the body) has to be taken as a sign” can

be translated in terms of a social media environment language in order to make the

user “standing for something else in front of a reacting audience”. Firstly, I am going

to describe what “performative situation” means, after which I will attempt to explain

what characteristics can take in a digital platform as it is social media.

Chiel Kattenbelt explains that Eco’s concept of “performative situation”

“(without defining it explicitly) refers to a situation in which objects, bodies, actions

and events are shown by – and, as a result, function as –intentional signs (Eco 1977,

117) in the perspective of (a) possible world(s) or situation(s)” (Kattenbelt 2010, 30).

In addition, he relates “performative situation” to “ostension” (Eco 1997,110) in order

to conclude that “the performed objects, bodies, actions and events are disposed of

their contingency” (Kattenbelt 2010, 30). Concerning this line of thinking I could

observe that social media are much related to the notions of ‘sign’ and ‘contingency’.

Their function is based on a network model, which means that inside a social media

environment everything is potentially interconnected and interrelated and thus

provides a large set of possible events or circumstances. Their existence itself depends

on a language which consists of digital signs and thus everything that happens inside

their space is designed to be shown according to these intentional signs. That means

that the user him-/herself, in order to be a part of the environment, is obliged to

express him-/herself through an established language which is also supplied with a

range of aesthetic elements. By expressing him-/herself in this language, the user is

automatically being transformed into a sign. It would be very interesting to examine if

this transformation is taken into consideration by the user or not, but this is an

argument which could not fit in the extent of this paper.

PART 2: Approaching Social Media as a digital stage

As I have already mentioned in the introduction, my aim in this paper is to reflect

upon the characteristic features that make our participation in social media to be

considered as performative. In order to achieve that, I am going to explore the social

media environment as a theatrical one.

The stage

As Bernie Hogan observes in his article “The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social

Media”, social media environments can be conceived as exhibition spaces, as they “do

not depend on being bounded in space and time with continued observation occurring

between individuals” (Hogan 2017). He emphasizes that social media have the

following features:

1. Information signifying an individual is delivered to the audience, on

demand by a third party.

2. Because of the reproducibility of content and the fact that it is sent to a

third party for distribution, the submitter does not continually monitor these data as an

audience is receiving it, and may possibly never fully know the audience. (Hogan

2017)
 Although he relates the features above to the structure of an exhibition space,

I would like to add that these could also be sufficient components of a performance

process. In this line of thinking, I would take a chance to describe social media as a

continually operating exhibition space which can easily host a great amount of both

artworks and performances which are available to the audience any time their creators

want to exhibit them.

The audience

Social media demands an active audience and the boundaries between the performers

and the audience are very thin. As part of the audience the user can respond, evaluate,

and share his opinion or write any comment about the performance in which has been

addressed. But how can the audience approach a performance? As Hogan explains

“Sharing artifacts online is often done through ‘friends’. As such, people add many

friends to their online profile in order to participate in these sites fully. Curators use

this list of friends in order to determine how to properly redistribute content” (Hogan

2017). In other words, the audience can approach only the performances that are

related to the platforms or groups they are participants of. The access in these

performances is given by the curators of each platform, according to criteria such as

the performer’s intentions and the audience’s preferences.

The “(cyber)performers”

For most users the online self is an extension of their offline self. Laura Robinson

defines the users of cyberspace as “cyberperformers” (she relates this notion more to
Goffman’s theory) and, especially for the users of social media, she underlines their

tendency to present themselves by providing a great deal of personal information such

as name, age, gender and even physical size (Robinson 2017, 106). I would also like

to add in this list the characteristic features of the face, the color of the hair and the

quality of voice. This is a set of information which is exposed in forms of writing or

audiovisual material and I could say that they frame the cyber-performing ‘body’. It is

about a system of signs that define the performer’s raw material.

There is another category of information that cyberperformers share and it is

related to their social identity. In this category are included: information such as

profession, hobbies, specific tastes of music, films, arts, food or dressing and every

other information that can somehow define cyberperformers social self. It is clear that

this second category refers to what is called ‘social roles’ which is related from many

sociologists and psychologist to the human tendency to perform. Evreinoff underlined

that “we are all essentially theatrical beings” (Evreinoff 1927) in a perspective that we

all desire to be ‘different’. In a social media environment, the cyberperformer has the

potential to design exactly who he wants to be, as his/her main profile is been

constructed at the largest scale from what information he/she chooses to show.

However, the most interesting part in this process of showing is the fact that

the cyberperformer has to present him-/herself according to aesthetic terms. The style

he/she chooses to present him-/herself is as much important as the main content of the

presentation. Social media provide a wide range of applications (photo shooting,

video recording, sound recording, text writing) which are supplied with a number of

aesthetic tools (photographic filters, visual effects, sound effects, graphics, emoticons

etc.). Thus, cyberperformers have literary to compose an artwork to construct their

digital identity. Furthermore, as social media is a space which provide multiple

stages, cyberperformers can also construct multiple identities. As Hogan notifies “one

may have a clean profile on Facebook but a series of lewd pictures on Xtube.com,

Suicidegirls.com, Pornotube.com, and so forth. Similarly, one may be sexually

ambiguous or even deceptive on Facebook or one’s twitter account, but still have an

openly gay profile on Gaydar.co.uk, Gay.com, Manhunt.com, and so on” (Hogan

2017). It is clear that cyberperformers construct identities that are relative to their

networks, and to achieve that they use different kind of aesthetics each time. In other

words, every composition they make depends on the way they want to address their

audience. This is a technique that could also be related to Goffman’s notion of

“impression management” (Goffman 1956, 70).

The performances

Below I am going to make a list (which can be much more extended) of some of the

main forms that cyberperformers use in order to participate in social media

environments.

Storytelling: As Ruth E. Page observes, cyberperformers use social media to

share stories about many different topics. These stories can include “reports of

professional activity, document ongoing stories of personal activity from the narrator’s

private life, even profoundly significant life events and deeply personal emotive topics”

(Page 2012). According to Page, the narrators of these stories can use words, images,

sounds and audiovisual resources like the video published on YouTube and the podcasts

from the archives of the oral history project to communicate their story.
 Real time reporting or live streaming: These kinds of actions enable the

users to produce an ongoing episodic series of consecutive posts, which is referred to

the here and now of their off-line environment.

Selfies: Selfies are defined as “photographs that one has taken of oneself,

typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media” (English

Oxford Living Dictionary 2017). They are self-portraits which cyberperformers use in

order to state the situation of their presence. It is interesting to mention that

cyberperformers have developed a set of aesthetic forms to declare a specific situation

of their presence. The most popular of them are “duck-face”, “morphing” and “tongue-

selfie”.

Digital ‘cadavre exquis’: Some cyberperformers submit an unfinished

sentence in their personal page and ask people to finish it in their way. This kind of

action aims to engage the audience in a topic that the cyberperformer is interested in.

I chose these examples to underline that most of the performances in social

media are self-referential and have a multimedia form (as they are a combination of

texts, images and sounds). In order to answer the question if all content can be

considered as performance, Hogan makes a distinction “between performance as

ephemeral act and performance as recorded act” (Hogan 2017, 380). He emphasizes

that if “a performance has been recorded, the nature of the performance has altered”

(Hogan 2017, 380). Although a recorded performance continues to signify an

individual, it is no longer related to the specific audience who were present when the

performance took place. Whilst I agree with this concern, I would like to add in this

line that when a user decides to submit his/her recorded performance in a platform,

the submission itself becomes a new performance which addresses the audience of the
platform. Moreover, I would like to argue that the fact that social media automatically

transform every ephemeral performance into a recorded one, can be translated not

only as a cancellation of the performative orientation but also as an extension of the

performing duration.

Conclusion

This essay did not aim to exhaust all the characteristics that could turn social media

into a digital stage, but was more an effort of mapping this topic. However, in this

primary approach we can already observe that social media environments are directly

related to the notion of performance as it is defined by Goffman, since they are

environments which allow the actor to interact in front of an active audience.

Moreover, this interaction occurs in terms of aesthetic signs and this is the main

reason why social media are also related to Eco’s definition of performance. Namely

that it seems that our participation in social media has many similarities to the process

of theatre making and that every user can be at the same time a spectator, a performer,

or even a dramaturge and a director of his/her own articulations. Social media have

made evident, today more than ever, the performative characteristics of our process of

communication. In this line of thinking, the social media environment could be

considered as a digital stage where we can examine our tendency to play roles in

order to communicate.
 Bibliography

Dragona, Daphne. 2017. "Tag ties and affective spies."Nextnode.net. Accessed November

11, 2017. http://nextnode.net/sites/emst/wp/?p=266.

Eco, Umberto. 1997. "Semiotics of Theatrical Performance." The Drama Review: TDR, 03:

107-117.

English Oxford Living Dictionary. 2017. "Selfie." Accessed November 2, 2017.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/selfie.

English Oxford Living Dictionary. 2017. "Social Media". Accessed November 2, 2017.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/social_media.

Evreinoff, Nicolas. 1927. The Theatre in Life. New York: Brentano's.

Goffman, Erving. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. USA: Random House.

Hogan, Bernie. 2017. "The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media: Distinguishing

Performances and Exhibitions Online." Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30,

no. 6: 377-386. https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467610385893.

Kattenbelt, Chiel. 2010. "Intermediality in Performance and as a Mode of Performativity." In

Mapping Intermediality in Performance, edited by Chiel Kattenbelt, Robin Nelson,

Sarah Bay-Cheng Andy Lavender, 29-38. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Page, Ruth E. 2012. Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction. New York:

Routledge.
Robinson, Laura. 2007. "The cyberself: the self-ing project goes online, symbolic interaction

in the digital age." New Media & Society 9, no. 1: 93-110.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444807072216.